Bertram slipped into the fiery mouth—as it swallowed him whole.
Kevin caught sight of Bertram's eyes as he dropped into the pit. Then Bertram was gone, and the hole that had split open the wooden floor vanished as if it had never existed.
All that was left of Bertram was the echo of a distant cry that soon became nothing more than the moaning of the wind. And then silence.
Everything was exactly the way it was before; the only thing missing was a chair. And Bertram.
It all happened in the blink of an eye, and kids were still turning their heads to see what that flash of light was.
Ms. Q. came running back into the room. "What was that?" she asked.
"Spontaneous Human Combustion!" screamed Ralphy Sherman, flapping his arms like a crazy pigeon. "Spontaneous Human Combustion!!"
Ms. Q. dragged Ralphy straight to the principal's office.
CHAPTER 9
Out of Mind
The rest of the afternoon seemed to unfold around Kevin and Josh like one of their school plays— they were part of the production but hid so far upstage that no one noticed them.
They kept their mouths tightly shut and watched.
At first there was some confusion about Bertram's disappearance in Ms. Q.'s unruly classroom, until someone claimed to have seen Bertram run down the hall.
"Yeah, that's what happened," said someone else, and before long, everyone just figured Bertram had cut class (a common enough occurrence) and he'd turn up eventually. Only Hal protested, but no one ever listened to Hal, and they weren't about to start listening now.
Kevin suffered through the rest of the day with ice-cold, shaking hands and spoke to no one.
"I wish . . . I wish the glasses would stop working," he desperately whispered to himself, hidingalone in a bathroom stall between classes—but the glasses just vibrated and buzzed like feedback through the auditorium microphone, growing hotter and hotter, until Kevin had to fling them from his face. The sleek visor blade had power over everything except itself. Wishing them to stop was about as useless as wishing it had never happened.
Kevin shuffled around for the rest of the day with a pale green face that grew greener every time he thought of Bertram or Nicole—-but for the rest of the school, it was business as usual. The bells rang, kids were shuffled around the school like a deck of cards, and eventually both Bertram and Nicole were lost in the shuffle. Forgotten.
Out of sight, out of mind, thought Kevin. It was much truer than he could know.
After school, Josh spent a good angry hour blasting Kevin for being such an idiot.
"Bertram deserved to have his head flushed in a toilet, or to be strung up the flagpole by his underwear, but he didn't deserve what you did!" said Josh. "And you should never have tried to control Nicole's mind! I'll bet there's not enough energy in the whole universe to control a mind that stubborn!"
But it was done—and no amount of raving by Josh could undo anything.
A Habitrail rested on Kevin's bedroom desk. He had gotten it for Christmas the year before, but ever since Teri's snake found its way into their mother's jewelry box, animals that could fit in drawers were not allowed in the Midas home, so the Habitrail had never been used.
Kevin supposed his mother wouldn't approve of this, either.
Resting on a pile of cedar chips in the Habitrail was Nicole Patterson, somewhere in the neighborhood of six inches tall.
She was sound asleep—Kevin had put her into a deep sleep the moment he had wished her small, but she was bound to wake up sooner or later.
"Well," said Kevin, "it could be worse; I could have turned her into a shrimp."
"Yeah," said Josh. "I'm sure she'll thank you when she wakes up.".
Kevin looked down in shame.
"You oughta use those glasses to wish your lips into a zipper," said Josh, "so you can shut your fool mouth!"
Kevin nodded. "I deserved that."
"Damn right," said Josh. "You deserve a lot worse . . . but I don't know what."
The glasses were now in Kevin's shirt pocket, and he touched them with his right hand, as if pledging allegiance. He longed to put them on and feel their weight on the bridge of his nose. The glasses would take away the shame and the fear. They would make him feel strong and untouchable. Now all he felt was weak and empty. Every timehe took those glasses off, they seemed to take a chunk of his soul with them.
At about five o'clock, Nicole woke up.
Kevin and Josh, instantly chickens, dove to the ground and hid, without making as much as a single cluck.
"What the . . . ?" Nicole looked around. "All right, very funny. Now let me out."
Kevin peeked to see Nicole standing on the red running wheel that was normally reserved for small rodents.
"Kevin Midas!" said Nicole, "I should have known it was you. There better not be any hamsters in here!"
"No," said Kevin, "just you."
She yawned. "What time is it?" She looked down at the microscopic Mickey Mouse on her wrist. "Oh no! I missed gymnastics. I'd better get home, or my parents will kill me!"
"But, Nicole . . ." said Josh, climbing out from underneath the desk, ". . . you can't go home in your . . . um, condition."
"What condition?" asked Nicole.
Kevin grimaced. Was she so bewildered that she didn't know what was wrong?
"Nicole," said Kevin, "you may not have noticed this . . . but you're very, very small."
"I'm not small, I'm petite," she said. "There's a big difference. And besides, there are no small people, only small minds."
Nicole hopped off the running wheel and came right up to the plastic wall of the cage. She looked straight into Kevin's right eye, which, to her, must have seemed the size of a classroom globe.
"Joke's over," she said. "I have to get home."
Something's wrong with this, thought Kevin. She's acting . . . well, she's acting like Nicole, not like the victim of a freak miniaturization.
Kevin looked at Josh, who just shrugged, and so Kevin did as he was asked. He let Nicole out.
"Where's your phone?"
Both Kevin and Josh pointed dumbly to the phone sitting across the desk, and watched as Nicole climbed over a book, nearly losing a shoe in a sticky old soda stain, then climbed the face of the phone and heaved the receiver out of its cradle.
"I don't get it," said Josh. "Is she in shock or something? Doesn't she care that she's been Barbie-fied?"
Nicole went about her business, jumping on the phone buttons to dial them as if she did this every day.
"I don't get it, either," said Kevin.
Nicole knelt by the receiver as her mother answered on the other end.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Mom, it's me," said Nicole in that squeaky, mousey voice.
"Nicole?" said her mother, confused and startled by the strange sound of Nicole's voice. There was silence for a moment, but then Mrs. Patterson's confusion quickly passed away. Too quickly, Kevin thought.
"Thank God you're all right! You had us all worried, little lady—we had no idea where you were."
"I'm at a friend's house," explained Nicole. "I forgot to call."
"We'll talk about it when you get home," said her mother sternly.
Nicole sighed. "I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Good," said her mother. "And watch out for cats on the way home."
Kevin hung up the phone for her. Cats? he thought. Did she say watch out for cats?'
"You see the trouble you got me in? Wasn't your salami kiss bad enough? Now you have to kidnap me, too?"
Josh perked up. "You kissed her?"
There was no time for Kevin to answer, for just then his door sprang open with a bang, and Teri stormed in, unannounced, as she often did.
"Moron police," she said. "All morons present I.D."
Then she stopped dead, coming face-to-face with the Barbie-fied Nicole. Teri's jaw dropped dumbly, making her look like the only actual moron in the room.
Si
lence hung in the air like the Hindenburg.
Kevin braced for the explosion.
But it didn't happen.
Yes, for a moment terror and confusion filled Teri's eyes, but then Teri blinked, and the terror vanished. It was as though her whole brain had adjusted to accept what she was seeing . . . just as Nicole's mom had adjusted to the voice she was hearing over the phone.
"Hi, Nicole," said Teri as if everything in the world was perfectly fine.
Nicole waved. "Hi, Teri. Tell your brother that he's a waste of valuable protoplasm."
"I would, but I think he already knows." Teri sauntered out of the room as quickly as she had entered. "Better hope I don't tell Mom you're hiding a girl in your room." And then Teri disappeared into her own room.
"What is this?" cried Josh. "Has the whole world gone schizo?"
And then the truth swung itself at Kevin with such fury that his brain was launched into deep, deep left field.
He suddenly understood.
Kevin coughed out his wind, and no amount of rapid breathing could bring it back.
"Excuse us, Nicole." He grabbed Josh by the shirt and pulled him out into the hallway, still unable to catch his breath.
"Talk to me, Kev," said Josh. "Don't just stand there like a fish gulping air."
Kevin grabbed Josh by the shoulders and looked him right in the eye.
"Josh, how tall was Nicole yesterday?"
"She was normal, Kevin. You remember what normal is, don't you? About three inches taller than you!"
"Okay," said Kevin. "Now close your eyes and try to remember that. Try to remember the last time you saw her looking 'normal.' "
Josh closed his eyes, and after a few moments, his eyebrows wrinkled and knotted. "I can't," said Josh. "I can't picture it."
"Okay," said Kevin. "Now tell me what happened to Bertram."
Josh took a step away from Kevin. He rubbed his arms, as if he were cold. "You sent him to the land down under."
"And what did Bertram look like?"
Josh thought for a moment, and his eyebrows knotted up again.
"Well . . . he had braces. . . ."
"What else?"
Josh stammered a bit.
"What else?"
"Give me a minute . . . ."
"What about his hair, his eyes, how tall was he?"
"I DON'T KNOW! I can't remember, so just shut up about it, okay?"
Josh looked terrified, and Kevin knew why. Itwas as if someone had yanked something out of their heads. It was like that old trick of pulling a tablecloth out from underneath a perfectly set table. Everything looked fine, but something was missing.
Josh couldn't remember, and neither could Kevin. If he tried really hard, he could remember Bertram's voice, or part of his face, or the smell of his gum, but the memories were fading, becoming harder and harder to find.
"What did you do, Kevin? What the hell did you do?"
"I think . . ." said Kevin, "I think I've changed the rules, somehow."
Josh scowled at him, trying to understand.
"It's like . . . you know, when you're dreaming; first you're in your house, then suddenly you're at school, then suddenly you're at the mall in your underwear, but no one notices—not even you— because while you're dreaming, you don't notice when things don't make sense. You don't notice when the rules change, you know?"
Josh's lips started to quiver. He was breathing fast, too, and Kevin knew that he was beginning to understand.
Kevin slipped the glasses out of his pocket and put them on. His whole body surged with warmth.
"See, Josh, if I were to say something like 'two plus two equals three,' suddenly it would be true, and no one would know any better."
Josh reached out and plucked the glasses from Kevin's face. They made a suction sound as they came off, like a snail being pulled off a window.
"When I first got the glasses, Josh, they just made things—but now that I've had practice, and gotten better at it, the glasses are doing even more. Now the glasses are re-making the rules. They're re-imagining the universe!"
They both glanced into Kevin's bedroom, where Nicole was bouncing on an eraser as if it were a miniature trampoline.
"So no one's going to notice anything strange about Nicole being six inches tall?" asked Josh.
"No one . . . they'll just look right past it, and not give it a second thought, like it's normal . . . and it's the same with Bertram. Pretty soon, Bertram's going to be completely gone. No one will remember he ever existed—-not even his own parents. . . . Nobody but you and me."
"Why me?" asked Josh. "If you're the one changing the rules, how come I know something's wrong?" But Josh answered his own question. "It's because I was there with you when you found the glasses, isn't it?"
Kevin nodded. "We're in this together."
Josh looked at the glasses, which were still inhis hands. Kevin's tone changed. "I'd like them back, please," said Kevin.
Josh's grip tightened on the lenses. "Maybe I should keep them for you . . . so there's no more trouble."
Kevin reached out a hand, and his fingers closed around the glasses as well.
"Let go, Josh."
They stood there, facing off—neither of them letting go.
"Jump ball," said Josh, with a nervous chuckle.
"Let go, Josh."
There was something in Kevin's voice-- something so commanding that Josh couldn't fight it. Josh let go, and his shoulders sagged. Kevin shoved the glasses back into his shirt pocket, and Josh rubbed his hands on his pants, as if trying to wipe off invisible blood.
"I'm an accessory," said Josh, with bitter resignation. "An accessory to the crime."
Kevin saw Nicole to the door. He offered to walk her home, but she wouldn't allow it.
"I'm fine by myself," said Nicole. "Cats are stupid, anyway."
As she stood on his palm, before Kevin let her down to the ground, she took a long look at him.
"You know," said Nicole, "you should have waited."
"Huh?"
"You should have waited before you kissed me. It was a really dumb thing to do. You should have waited till we were, like, going out or something."
Kevin set her gently down on the sidewalk. "But you'd never go out with me."
Nicole shrugged. "You never asked me." Then she turned and began the long, long walk back to her house four blocks away.
CHAPTER 10
Specters in the Dark
Kevin told himself he wouldn't use them again. No matter how miserable he felt without the glasses on his face, he swore he'd stop once and for all.
Yet as he lay in bed that night, thoughts of the glasses pushed everything else out of his aching head. He knew where they were, so close, sitting there in his shirt pocket, hung on the back of his desk chair.
It wouldn't hurt just to look at them, thought Kevin, and so he heaved his cold, shaking body out of bed, took the glasses from his shirt, and set them open on his desk.
About a foot away from the wall outlet.
The glasses had already drained the heat from the room, but it wasn't enough. They sat there spent and powerless, just like Kevin, in a room that had become as cold as winter. Now the blade of the lenses was a dull, foggy gray, like cheap plastic that had been washed too many times.
In a moment, an arc of blue electricity bridged the cold air between the glasses and the outlet. It looked like one of those mad scientific devices in old monster movies.
Kevin slipped under his blankets and watched. It wouldn't hurt to let the glasses charge up just a little, he thought. Only they didn't charge just a little, they charged a lot. For half an hour Kevin watched and listened to the gently crackling electrical hum while everyone else slept.
Soon the glasses looked perfect again. The smooth visor blade was sharp and shiny—as perfect and pure as a diamond. They sat there, waiting patiently for Kevin.
Now Kevin longed more than ever to have the cold and the emptiness he felt chased a
way by the glasses.
If I wore them for just a second, it couldn't hurt, he thought. Could he bear that? Wearing them for just a second? Of course he could. Then he could put them back in his shirt pocket. That's what he'd do.
He reached out, crooked his finger, and grabbed the glasses, just as he had the first time, when he had seen them on the mountain. He slipped them on his face.
Instantly the icy night rolled over into a thick, warm quilt for Kevin to wrap himself in, protecting him from anything hidden in the shadows.
He stretched and let the warmth relay- down his spinal column until it pulsed in his fingers and toes.
How good it was to feel so warm, so safe, and so comfortable. How could he ever want to feel differently?
Still wearing the glasses, Kevin felt sleep begin to pull him down with caressing hands. He gave no resistance.
Kevin opened his eyes some time later, deep into the night, hearing the distant sound of metal against metal. A rattling sound. A tilt of the head told him that the sound came from the left side of his room—more specifically, his closet.
Kevin sat up and walked what seemed to be twice the usual distance, noticing the sickly-sweet aroma of overripe fruit. Pushed by curiosity, he reached for the 'knob and turned it. The door creaked open to reveal a place that bore no resemblance to Kevin's closet. And Bertram was there.
Bertram was in the same clothes he wore the moment he was sucked out of the world, only now they were drenched in sweat.
Yes. Now I remember what he looked like was the first thought that flashed in Kevin's mind. Then the shock and horror followed it in, like thunder.
Bertram lunged at Kevin in fury, only to be choked back by the chains. Heavy black chains circled his legs, arms, and neck, rattling like iron bones. They were fastened securely to a jagged wall of steaming, black, shiny stone, which had replaced the walls of Kevin's closet. The glass-like obsidian shimmered, reflecting fires unseen.
It was exactly what Kevin imagined Hell to be like.
Except for the fish.
Bertram's Hell had fish everywhere. They flopped at his feet, they slithered down the wall and into his shirt. And they all smelled like used fruity bubble gum. It must have been-Bertram's worst nightmare.