“Right,” I replied.
“And, you, Ariana, you didn’t hear a thing?”
“No, but I saw what happened to Jason!”
“The smoke and the snakes.”
“They were more like tentacles,” Ariana said.
“Tentacles. Uh-huh.” Chief Hayes was smoking again. He exhaled and played with a pencil. He looked as if he were trying to remember where he kept the straitjackets. “Now, David, did these … voices sound familiar to you?”
“Nope. Two of them sounded really old-fashioned, almost British. The other one was definitely American. He was trying to sound cool, but he got it all wrong. He actually said stuff like, ‘You dig?’ and ‘Daddy-o.’ ”
“Ancient,” Chief Hayes grumbled. “People talked like that when I was in high school.”
“Exactly.”
Chief Hayes raised an eyebrow and spread out the papers Ariana had collected — the ones Jason had thrown to the ground. “And these mean nothing to you.”
Ariana and I looked at it all again: receipts from a cash machine and Write Bros, stationery store; a gum wrapper; and a business card belonging to someone named George Derbin from AccuByte, a nearby software company.
“Well, Jason was talking with some guy in a jacket and tie in the lobby just before this all happened,” I said. “Maybe that was George Derbin.”
Chief Hayes took the card and pressed the speaker button on his phone. The dial tone droned, and he punched the number on the card.
“Hello, you have reached the AccuByte electronic voice-message service,” a recorded voice blared over the speaker. “If you would like to leave a message for a specific person, please enter the first three letters of that person’s name. Otherwise — ”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Thank you. There is no one at AccuByte with the letters of the name requested. If you would like to try a different — ”
Chief Hayes slammed the receiver down and typed in some letters on his computer. While the hard drive burbled, he riffled through the pages of a phone book.
“Hmm, nothing in the white pages or the police files under Derbin,” he mumbled. “David, what did this guy in the hallway look like?”
“Young, black, not much older than us, really tall and skinny. His face was a little … I don’t know, distorted, I guess. Lumpy. Bad skin. Jason had told me he was supposed to meet some Penn State alumnus, so I figured that was him.”
“And he was not in the basement when you got there?” he asked.
“Even if he was, we wouldn’t have seen him,” Ariana said. “The fog was too thick.”
“He might have been sucked down into the hole, too,” I suggested.
“That still doesn’t explain what either of them was doing down there in the first place,” the chief said. “Is that part of the basement used for anything these days?”
“This group called The Delphic Club meets there,” I answered. “I mean, it’s supposed to be a secret — ”
Chief Hayes’s eyes bore into mine. “What do they do?”
“I’m not sure. Supposedly talk about philosophy and poetry — ”
“Do they sing?”
Ariana and I exchanged a blank look. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Why?”
Chief Hayes shrugged. “The acoustics are great down there,” he muttered.
“Look, I know you don’t believe us,” Ariana said, “but if you’re looking for some easy explanation — ”
“I’m not.” Chief Hayes slumped back with a weary sigh. He put his fingers to his brow and stayed that way for a long time. Just when I thought he had passed into a nap, he looked up. “I went down into that basement in my senior year, after the search for my friend was called off, and before they sealed the trick wall. I was so angry — I thought for sure I’d find clues of KKK meetings or something. I figured all those people who suspected Communist or Fascist groups were just wrong. … Well, they were. But so was I.”
“What did you find?” Ariana asked.
“A singing group,” he said. “All seniors, all dressed up in togas and stuff, very weird. They seemed happy to see me and pulled me over to teach me the song. I didn’t want to, but they all grabbed me. I panicked and fought back. Next thing I knew, I was alone, flat on my back in the dark. I got up and tried to run out, but my ankle was hurt. Eventually it developed a bone spur and never healed.”
“Which is why you limp,” I said.
“That’s right.” Chief Hayes lifted his left pant leg and rolled down his sock to reveal a golfball-size growth. “Let me ask you, David. Did you have that bump on your forehead before you went into the basement?”
My fingers flew upward. I groped around and discovered a small hard lump on my right temple. “Whoa … this is new. I guess I must have hit my head.”
Chief Hayes reached out and touched my forehead. “It’s rock-hard. Bone. This is no ordinary bump. I believe you have a calcium growth, just like my ankle spur.”
“You think there’s some connection?” Ariana asked.
“I’m thinking aloud.” Chief Hayes began pacing. “The face of this Derbin guy … you described it as lumpy.”
I nodded. “Yeah, like he had some sort of disease.”
“Did you ever see the movie The Elephant Man?”
“About the guy with the deformed body,” Ariana said.
“He was a victim of neurofibromatosis,” Chief Hayes went on. “A buildup of calcium all over his body.”
“So you think there’s a connection between what Derbin has and what we have,” I said.
“And maybe Derbin is connected to whatever is in the basement,” Ariana continued. “He may have led Jason there!”
“We need to figure out who this guy is,” Chief Hayes said.
“How?” I asked.
“I can run a check throughout the nearby precincts. If I don’t find anything, I can try to get access to FBI information. In the meantime, we try to work on the name itself. My hunch is it’s an alias. If so, the name itself may contain a clue. People pick aliases for a reason — sometimes consciously, sometimes not. A person from Texas might call himself Dallas, for example. Another might scramble the letters of his name, or borrow his mom’s maiden name, or name himself after something in his neighborhood, like a restaurant or street. Is there a Derbin Avenue in some nearby town, or a Derbin diner?”
“We can work on that,” I said. Ariana nodded in agreement.
Chief Hayes stood near his desk. “Fine. And promise me two things: You won’t talk about this to anybody, and you won’t do a thing related to this case without consulting me.”
“It’s a deal,” I said.
“Deal,” Ariana agreed.
“Let me warn you. Things are going to get rough around here this weekend. I issued a public statement about John Christopher’s death an hour ago. Expect panic, and lots of crazy talk.” Chief Hayes took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry about your friend.”
Ariana looked at the floor.
“So are we,” I managed to say.
When I walked into my house, I saw myself in the living room mirror. Ariana had exaggerated. My hair was not all white.
Actually, it was still mostly brown. I guess you’d call it salt-and-pepper.
I couldn’t help grinning. It looked kind of cool.
My mom was asleep on the couch. On her chest was a photo album.
I gently lifted it. It was open to old photos of her and my dad on their honeymoon in Greece. I couldn’t help leafing through.
They looked young and happy, grinning in front of restaurants, beaches, and tons of different ruins. Each photo had a brief caption, carefully written in my mother’s handwriting: SOAKING UP HISTORY AT THE PARTHENON; FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PERICLES; THE LABYRINTH AT KNOSSOS; THE ORACLE AT THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO, DELPHI.
My eyes locked on that last picture. Mom and Dad had their arms around each other. Behind them were half-buildings and cracked walls.
Under it was
written THE OMPHALOS.
“David?”
My mom’s eyes flickered open. She looked at me, blinking.
“Hi, Mom.” I held up the album, pointing to the picture. “What’s this?”
“David, what on Earth did you do to your hair — and your forehead?”
I had figured this out on the way home. “We were playing around with hair dye. We’re doing a skit — the staff, I mean. I’m going to play Mr. DeWaart. And, uh, I bumped my head in gym. Klutz, huh? So. What does omphalos mean?”
Raising a suspicious eyebrow, she took the book from my hand and looked at it. “Belly button.”
“What?”
She smiled. “The Ancient Greeks thought Delphi was the center of the world. A famous oracle lived there, and it was protected by Apollo, the god of music and poetry. People came from all over to have their fortunes told. Songs were sung day and night — Apollo’s spirit rubbed off, I guess. Anyway, Delphi became known as the omphalos, which was another way of saying ‘the center.’ ”
“You think this was all true?” I asked.
Mom laughed. “The problem was, a special priestess had to translate the oracle’s messages, because the oracle was really a vein of gas that hissed up through the ground. It probably sounded to the Greeks like whispers.”
“Gas, huh?” I said. “A legend out of mystical Earth farts.”
“Something like that.” She got up from the couch and yawned. “Now come help me with dinner. And please wash that stuff out of your hair.”
“I … kind of like it,” I replied, promising myself I’d get some brown hair dye.
That night I could not get to sleep. The voice had told me I was at the omphalos. What did that mean? I mean, Wetherby, the center of the world? Please. Maybe they truly meant the belly button. The Lint Catcher of the World. That was more like it.
I flicked on the night-light and grabbed a used envelope out of my trash can. On top I wrote:
GEORGE DERBIN
I began playing around with the letters. I came up with:
It was getting ridiculous, and my eyes were shutting —until I wrote:
GREG DREIBONE
POGER BEIGEND
BEN RIDGE GOER
NERO GEBRIDGE
ED EGO BRINGER
ONE BIED EGGER
GREED OR BINGE
GREEN DOG BRIE
BEER IN DE GROG
It was getting ridiculous, and my eyes were shutting — until I wrote:
REGGIO BENDER
I sat up. I quickly rearranged a few letters and came up with another name. The name of a person I knew about but had never met, a person who matched the description of George Derbin, minus the growths on his face.
One by one, I checked the letters to make sure I hadn’t slipped one in or dropped one.
When I was sure I hadn’t, I stared at the name until it burned itself in my eyes.
REGGIE BORDEN
I almost didn’t get to sleep that night. But I did.
And I dreamed.
Part Six
Mark
Chapter 21
“HOLD HIS ARM, GARVIN,” the police lieutenant says to the young police officer, who is so pretty Mark has the urge to ask her out.
And he might have, if they hadn’t at that moment been in the city morgue.
He braces himself. Another officer slowly pulls open a drawer. No one has said exactly who he is supposed to identify. And even though Mark has only one family member — unless you count his mom and dad, who he still thinks are alive somewhere — he holds out hope the drawer will hold a stranger. He will shake his head no, walk out, and suggest dinner and a very sexy movie to Officer Garvin. He wonders how old she is. Probably early twenties.
The cadaver is short. The other officer efficiently pulls back the white sheet, sending a puff of icy smoke in the air.
Mark feels suddenly congested, as if he can’t breathe.
Officer Garvin squeezes his arm. Mark feels his knees buckle.
“It’s my grandmother,” he manages to say. He turns to the lieutenant, who looks either bored or solemn. “How did it happen?” Mark asks.
“A bus,” the lieutenant says. “It was very sudden. No one exactly saw her get in front of it.”
Mark understands what that meant. She was old. She couldn’t judge distances. Her reflexes were bad.
It was her fault.
Officer Garvin helps him into another room, which is empty except for a few metal chairs, a table, and a wall phone. She is holding some stapled-together pieces of paper, which she drops onto the table.
Mark sits. He watches the room circle around him and blur.
The tears surprise him. He hasn’t cried in years. Twelve, to be exact — since before his parents’ funeral service. He had clammed up that day — no crying, no words, nothing. His Yiayia had been frightened by his behavior. But nobody had understood the truth, that his mom and dad were still alive. Somewhere. So what was the use of looking sad? It would only make everyone else believe the lie even more.
But he has just seen Yiayia. She is dead. And the sight of her makes him think —for the first time — that maybe his parents are, too.
It gushes out. Years of buried anger and hurt and fear and love and sorrow. He weeps, heaving his shoulders. He is alone now.
“What — what’s going to happen to me?” he asks between sobs.
“We’ll have to notify your next of kin — an aunt, uncle, another grandparent — ”
Mark shakes his head. “My grandfathers are both dead. My other grandmother lives on a Greek island and doesn’t speak English, my mom’s sister is in a religious cult, and my dad was an only child.”
“I see.” Officer Garvin sits back in her chair. “Mark, how old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
She drums her fingers on the table, then picks up the phone. “Garvin here. Can I have Social Services?”
When she gets off the phone, Mark asks, “Do I have to be sent to an orphanage or something?”
“No. But until you’re eighteen, you need a guardian. We’ll help find you a good foster family — people who have experience with teens.”
Mark isn’t hearing her words. He stares at the top sheet of the papers she has put on the desk. It is loaded with blank lines. Only one of them is filled in.
He tries to focus. He blinks, and the handwriting becomes clear. After DATE OF DEATH someone has scribbled today’s date: January 11, 2016.
A tear lands on the “J.” Mark watches it soak in and spread the ink in a star shape. Officer Garvin is still talking. He can tell she is crying, too.
Later. A couple of weeks, maybe. Mark is staying at the house of a friend, Jon Feldman. He stumbles out of bed when Mrs. Feldman calls him to the phone. “Yeah?” he grunts into the receiver. “Hi, Mark? It’s Officer Garvin.” And I’m going to adopt you and we can play house together, Mark wants her to say.
No such luck. “We’ve found a family,” she goes on. “Or a father, at least. His name is Walter Ojeda. He’s a widower, he’s really nice, and he lives close enough so you can finish out senior year in your school if you want.” “What’s close enough?”
“Two towns over. Wetherby.”
“I don’t want to live in that hole.”
“You’d be surprised. They’ve rebuilt that town from the ground up, ever since the chemical company opened.”
“I know. My parents worked there.”
“Great! Look, I know you’ll do terrifically. Anyway, Mr. Ojeda will be coming to visit you at the Feldmans’ tonight. Would you like me to fax you a holo of him?”
“I guess.”
“Okay. Bye. And don’t worry.”
“Right. Bye.”
Mark waits by the fax until it spits out a color hologram of Walter Ojeda. He looks older than Mark expects him to. He’s kind of stern-looking, but it’s hard to tell for sure behind the beard.
Plus he has this growth on his cheek. Mark doesn’t k
now why, but that bothers him.
Part Seven
David
Chapter 22
I WOKE UP IN a cold sweat. My dream was breaking up into fragments of memory, and I didn’t try to hold on to them.
My clock said 9:07. I’d gone to sleep at sunrise, 6:00 or so.
Three fat hours. I was going to be in great shape today.
It didn’t matter. I had work to do. Lots of it.
I was dressed in seconds. Quietly I opened my door and heard my mom’s snores from her room. I tiptoed downstairs and punched Ariana’s number on the kitchen phone.
She picked up in the middle of the first ring. She was sobbing. “I’m sorry! Oh, I’m so glad you called. I … I love you so much. Please come over. Please!”
“Sure, Ariana,” I replied softly. “I’ll be right there.”
“David?”
“Uh-huh.”
She groaned. “I thought you were Stephen! Ohhhh, I feel like such an idiot! Why did you do that to me?”
“Uh, Ariana, you didn’t even wait to hear my voice.”
“Okay, okay. What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you. I know who George Derbin is.”
“Really? Who?”
“Reggie Borden.”
The phone fell silent. “Ariana,” I continued, “are you still there?”
“Yeah. I must be half-asleep, though, because I thought I heard you say George Derbin was Reggie Borden. Silly me.”
“That is what I said. The names are anagrams of each other. Derbin was young, thin, black, and incredibly tall — just like Reggie. The photos of Reggie look a lot like the guy I saw with Jason — except George Derbin had those growths on his face.”
“Oh, this is too weird. I’m not hearing this.”
“Ariana, remember in Chief Hayes’s office, when you suggested that Jason had been led into the basement?”
“Yeah, I suggested George Derbin had led him. What are you saying? That Reggie Borden actually hibernated underground all these years, like Rip Van Winkle?”