I barely heard him. I felt as if something had crawled into my head and was kickboxing with my brain.
I struggled to stay upright. I couldn’t even see Barry now. The back of my leg smacked against a parked car. I spun into the street, trying to keep my balance. The blacktop rushed toward me and I put out my hands to stop the fall.
The last thing I saw was the grille of a late-model Toyota speeding toward my face.
CHAPTER THREE
FLATLINING
BEEP…
Beep…
Harp strings? What was that noise?
The street was gone, and I could see nothing. I felt as if I were floating in a tunnel of cold air. I had dreamed my own death, and then it had really happened. I pried my eyes open briefly. It hurt to do it, but in that moment I had a horrifying realization.
The afterlife was beige.
I tried to cry out, but my body was frozen. Odd whistling sounds drifted around me like prairie winds.
Slowly I began making out voices, words.
Peering out again, I hoped to see cherubim and seraphim, or at least a few clouds. Instead I saw nostril hairs. Also, really dark eyebrows and blue eyes, attached to a man’s face that loomed closer.
I felt a hand push my head to the side. I tried to speak, to resist, but I couldn’t. It was as someone had turned the off switch on all my body functions. “Extremely odd case,” the man said in a deep voice. “No diabetes, you say? He had all inoculations? No history of concussion?”
“Correct, Dr. Saark,” came an answer. “There’s nothing that would indicate these erratic vital signs. He’s a healthy boy. We haven’t a clue what’s wrong.”
I knew the second voice. It was my family doctor, Dr. Flood. She’d been taking care of me since I was a baby.
So I was not dead, which was a big relief. But hearing your doctor’s voice is never a cheery thing. I was tilted away from the voices, and all I could see were an IV stand, electrical wires, and a metal wastebasket.
It had to be Belleville Hospital, where I hadn’t been since I was born. I must have been hit by a car.
The math test! I had visions of a blank sheet of paper with a big, fat zero. I willed myself to open my mouth. To tell them I was all right and had to get to school. But nothing moved.
“A highly rare set of symptoms,” Dr. Saark said, “but it fits exactly into the recent research I’ve been doing…”
Dr. Flood exhaled loudly. “We’re so lucky you were in town and could rush here at such short notice.”
I felt fingers at the back of my head, poking around where the upside-down V was. I felt a rush of panic. I figured I was about to become the first kid in the world with a prescription for Grecian Formula.
Heavy footsteps plodded into the room. “Excuse me?” Dr. Flood said. She sounded confused, maybe annoyed. “What are you doing here?”
“Chaplain,” a gruff voice answered. “New on job.”
While Dr. Flood dealt with the chaplain, Dr. Saark pushed my head back and slipped something in my mouth. He held my mouth shut, forcing me to swallow. From under his sleeve, I could see a tattoo that looked like two winding snakes.
What did he just give me? Could he see my eyes were open? What kind of doctor had a tat like that?
What was a chaplain doing here?
“But…I never sent a request for a chaplain,” Dr. Flood said, sounding completely confused. “Are you sure you’re in the right room?”
“Yes, correct,” the man replied. “For last rites. Hospital rules. These situations…you know.”
Last rites? As in, the prayers spoken over people about to die—those last rites?
I panicked. I was obviously in worse shape than I thought. Then my body lurched violently, and everything turned white.
“He’s flatlining!” Dr. Saark shouted. “Dr. Flood, notify the OR. I need a gurney, stat!”
My body convulsed. I heard choking noises—my own. And hurried footsteps as Dr. Flood left the room.
The room was a blur of colors. The two men—Saark and the chaplain—were on either side, strapping my arms and legs down. My head jerked backward, and I thought it would crack open like an egg.
Hold on. Don’t die.
Dr. Saark stood over me, his face red and beaded with sweat. “Now!” he said.
The chaplain was nearly a foot taller than Dr. Saark and at least fifty pounds heavier, but he snapped to, fumbling for something in his inner pocket. I could see his face for the first time—green eyes, ruddy skin, curly red hair, and a deep jagged scar that ran down the left side of his cheek and disappeared into a bushy beard. He pulled out a long syringe with one hand, and with the other wiped my arm with an alcohol pad. As he leaned down, I realized I’d seen him before.
I tried to call out. I opened my eyes as wide as they could go. I stared at the man’s face, willing myself to stay awake.
A word escaped my mouth on a raspy breath: “Red…”
I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. As the room went black, one last word dribbled out.
“…Beard.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DREAM
A ring of fire, screaming animals, the end of the world. I am being attacked by a hose-beaked vromaski, whose breath is like a roomful of rotting corpses. Its head is long and thin, with a snout like a sawed-off elephant’s trunk. It has the sinewed body of a striped, shrunken cheetah, with long saberlike fangs and scales in place of fur.
As it thunders toward me through the burning jungle, its stocky legs trample everything in its path. In the distance a fireball belches from the top of a volcano, causing the ground to jolt.
The beast bares its teeth. Its crazed red eyes bore into me, desperate and murderous. But rather than running away, I face it head-on.
Mostly, I think, I’m an idiot.
I have a weapon in my right hand, a gleaming saber with a pearl-inlaid handle. It must weigh a hundred pounds, but it’s so well-balanced I barely feel it.
I rear back. The polished blade of the saber reflects in the vromaski’s red eyes. The creature roars, hurtling itself into the air, its teeth bared and aimed at my throat.
I swing with two arms. The saber shhhhinks through the fetid air, slicing off the beast’s head. Blood spatters onto my face and uniform, a brocaded tunic with a helmet and bronze chest plate, now washed in crimson.
Before the slavering monster’s head hits the ground, a creature swoops down from above, its gargantuan wings sending a blast of hot air into my face. With a screech, it grabs the bloody head in its talons and rises. I stumble back. Its wingspan alone is three times my height. I watch in fright and awe, recognizing the great beast somehow. It has the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.
NO.
The dream is not supposed to be like this. Before it was more of a game, the most awesome and scary 3-D video game ever. But now it feels different. The heat sears my flesh. The weight strains my muscles and the smells sicken me.
I turn to run, and I spot…her. The queen. But she’s not the same either. She’s got darker skin than before and a long face lined with worry. Behind her, the land falls off steeply, and I see a vast plain stretching to the horizon. But I follow her glance, which is looking toward a deep valley near us, a depression in the middle of the jungle. She points to a cave opening and looks at me pleadingly. Something has pained her deeply, but I don’t know what—has someone attacked her? Stolen something?
“What do you want me to do?” I shout. But she looks blankly back.
The sky suddenly darkens. In the distance, behind the queen and far below us, I see something growing. A dark blue watery mass at the edges of the vast plain. It is moving toward us, changing shape, roiling and spitting. It seems to be swallowing the earth as it charges, crashes downward, and shakes the earth.
In the valley, the cave is beginning to collapse.
The queen’s mouth drops open. I see a crack growing in the earth. Trees, bushes, still aflame, drop inside the gap
ing maw. I must leave. I can prevent the destruction. But for the life of me, I don’t know how. All I know is that I must leave. I must race downward to the ocean. I must find someone—someone who looks a great deal like…me.
I run. But the crack is now opening in my path. My brain is telling me I’ve been here before. This is where I die. I am heading for the hole.
I can’t dream my own death again. Can’t.
Somehow I know my brain can’t take this one more time. If I follow through, if I fall into the hole and die, this time it will be for real.
The flying creature swoops down. I feel its talons burn their way into the back of my head. In the shape of an upside-down V.
CHAPTER FIVE
ARRIVAL
“GEEEAHHH!” I BOLTED upward and immediately regretted it. The back of my head felt as if it had been blasted open, and I was afraid my brains would fall out.
I had been facedown. I’d lifted myself to a push-up position, on a bed with sheets soaked in sweat. I dropped back to the mattress instantly, letting out a moan.
What had they done to me?
Partied on the back of my head, that was obvious. I was afraid to move, even to think. I lay still, face buried in the damp pillow, catching my breath. Slowly, the pain began to subside. The stillness helped.
You’re okay. You lifted yourself too fast. Breathe in…breathe out…
I tried to think positively. The last thing I remembered, Dr. Flood was rushing off to notify the OR. That meant I’d had an operation. Okay. This made sense. I wasn’t convulsing or dizzy or hallucinating anymore. No more wooziness. I had a voice. I could move and see. So the operation must have worked, and I was hurting because of the surgery. That had to be it. When Dad had had surgery on his back a year ago, he’d been in bed for two days. I would need to recover, that’s all. I had to look on the bright side.
Surgery, I realized, was a good excuse for missing a math test.
I took a deep breath. Had they cured whatever had happened to me?
In a few moments, I cautiously turned my head. I could see that they’d moved me to another part of the hospital. Dressed me in a set of pajama pants and a neat white polo shirt. It was quiet here, not like the first room. No beeps or voices or traffic noise. The room was dimly lit by a pre-morning glow. The walls seemed to be a peaceful bluish shade, maybe turquoise. The floor was polished wood.
“Hello?” My voice was hoarse and barely audible. I wondered where I was. How long I’d been out.
A breeze wafted over me, pungent and salty.
Salty?
I moved a little more until I could see the windows. They were open. A nearly full moon was fading overhead into a shimmering, silvery sky. I’d seen that color only once before, on the day after Mom had died. Dad and I had stayed up all night and seen the sun rise.
It was warm out, but I’d been wearing a coat when I had my accident.
I thought back to what the doctor had said. A highly rare set of symptoms. Patients with rare conditions sometimes had to go to special hospitals with the right doctors and equipment. This seemed like California or Hawaii.
A closed door stood about ten feet away. Carefully I rolled over and sat up. The back of my head felt like an epic smackdown between John Henry and Thor. I sat for a long moment, took some deep breaths, and stood.
With tiny steps, I shuffled toward the door. I was fine as long as I didn’t move my head too much. Propping myself up on the doorjamb, I pushed the door open onto a long hallway.
It had a new-building smell, like sawdust and plastic. A carpet stretched down the corridor, past a few closed doors. At the end of it, a hospital orderly sat on a stool, snoring. His back was against the wall, his face drooped down into his chest. He had broad shoulders and sharp cheekbones. A flat cap was pulled down across his eyes, and he wore fatigues and thick boots. On his belt was a holstered pistol.
What kind of hospital armed its orderlies?
Waking him up seemed risky. I backed into the room. I needed to call Dad. I wondered if he’d landed yet, and if he knew where I was. How long had I been unconscious? How much time had passed since I was in Indiana?
Slowly I worked my way over to the foot of the bed. There, on top of a steamer chest, someone had placed my backpack and my clothes, neatly folded. I reached around in the pockets of the folded jeans for my phone, but it was gone. It wasn’t in my backpack, either.
But Mom’s birthday mirror was.
I pulled it out. Her smile seemed to blast out of the photo, cutting through the darkness. Across the room, the bathroom door was open, and I could see my reflection in shades of gray. I wondered what exactly they’d done to the back of my head.
Taking the mirror into the bathroom, I turned on the light.
I barely recognized the kid in the big mirror over the sink. My face was ghostly pale, my head completely shaved. I noticed for the first time a monogram on the polo shirt—KI.
I turned and held the small mirror so I could see the back of my head in the larger one. The white hair had been shaved off with the rest. But someone had drawn a shape in black marker, from the top to the bottom of my head, outlining exactly where the upside-down V had been. Bandages had been placed at the bottom of each line, just above the neck. I touched one and began to pull, but the pain was too sharp. There must have been stitches underneath. Incisions.
“What the—?” The mirror slipped from my hand and crashed to the counter. The mirror cracked instantly, as did the frame, one horizontal line down the center, separating the image of four-year-old me from still-alive Mom.
As I reached to pick it up, I heard a click behind me. I spun around to see a figure standing in the door. It was a guy about six feet tall. He slipped inside and shut the door behind him. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
I stepped toward the bed, barely feeling the pain now. “Fine, I guess,” I rasped. “Who are you?”
“Marco Ramsay.” He was wearing the same clothes as I was, but three or four sizes larger. His shoulders were wide, his feet enormous. He had high, chiseled cheekbones dotted with small patches of acne. Dark brown hair hung down to his brow, making his eyes seem to peer out of a cave. They darted toward the door as if he’d done something wrong. “Because I heard a noise from in here…” he said.
“I dropped a mirror, that’s all,” I said. “Um, I’m Jack.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. Anyway, that dude outside—you know, Conan? Special Ops, Sleep Division? He should have been in here to check on you, but it’s hard to wake him up. And if you do, he gets nasty. So I figured I’d check in myself. But it looks like you’re okay, so I guess I’ll go…” He began to turn back to the door.
“Wait!” I said. “This guy, Conan? Since when do they allow guns in a hospital?”
Marco gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Maybe one of the patients is a terrorist?”
The door swung open again and two others scurried in, a skinny guy and a girl with dyed-pink hair and a mole on her left cheek. She was about my age and looked like someone you didn’t cross. The guy seemed maybe a little younger and was a curly-haired version of George, the little guy from my school who’d been bullied by Barry Reese. “This is what we’re doing? We’re going to be in deep doo-doo, Marco,” the little guy said.
“Fun’s over,” the girl added, her voice a tense whisper. “C’mon, back to the kennel, Big Foot.”
Marco laughed. “Oh, look who’s Little Miss Obedient!” he said, also in a strange, whispery voice.
“Why are you guys whispering?” I said. “And what are you talking about? Kennel?”
“That’s supposed to be a joke,” Marco said. “Aly is a one-person Comedy Central.”
“Time to go!” said the shorter guy, his voice about three times as loud as the others. As he pulled the door wide open, he gave a dramatic wave. “See you at breakfast!”
“Dude, you’ll wake Conan!” Marco snapped. “Last time we did that, he punctured my basketball.”
“Will you guys at least tell me who you are and what we’re all doing here?” I shouted.
From out in the hallway, Conan let out a snort and a mumble. Marco froze.
The little guy was halfway out the door. “I’m Cass Williams, and this is Aly Black. Look, don’t get the wrong impression. We love this place, really. You will, too. It’s awesome. They’ll tell you everything soon. But we’re not supposed to be here right now. That’s all.”
Aly nodded and scurried out the door. Marco backed out, too, shooting me a thumbs-up. “Seriously, dude. Best place in the world. Great breakfasts. All you can eat. We’re all happy here. Later.”
Before I could say another thing, they were gone.
For a moment I wanted to race after them, but I knew my head would explode with the effort. And I didn’t want to risk waking the guy with the gun.
Plus, that was about the creepiest conversation I’d had in my life. Who were these losers? This felt like one big prank. Some crazy reality TV show. Postsurgical Punk’d.
I sank onto the bed and pinched my right arm, just to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. No chance of falling back to sleep now. Morning light was beginning to filter in through the windows, and I could see the room more clearly. I noticed a flag on the wall to my right, with a symbol that matched the one on my shirt:
The initials weren’t familiar. I searched for a call button, some kind of signal for a nurse. Nothing. No button, no medicine cabinet, no rolling tables or IV drips or hanging televisions. There was nothing hospital-like about this place at all.
I tried to think back to what had happened at Belleville. Had anyone said anything about moving me?
I’d had dizziness. I’d fallen into the street. In the hospital, there was this expert and Dr. Flood. She was worried. Some chaplain was there to perform last rites and that confused her…
But I never sent a request for a chaplain…
The chaplain had grabbed my arm. I remembered him now. Huge face, bulbous nose. Red Beard. The same guy who’d passed my house only an hour earlier, barefooted and without a clerical collar. He had tied me to a table and injected me with something. He wasn’t a chaplain. He was helping Dr. Saark. But helping him do what?