Hellhole

  Immediately Max swallowed and looked at the ground. He’d avoided his mother completely since he’d drunkenly snapped at her the night before, the mix of shame and awkwardness and pain too much for him to face.

  And now this.

  “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion, Max,” Principal Gregory said, “but you just seemed so agitated in my office yesterday, I wanted to come over and see for myself that everything was all right at home.”

  “Oh,” said Max.

  “Which it is, as you can see,” Max’s mom said, just a shade away from being rude. “You didn’t have to take the trouble to come over—”

  “Oh, we were just on our way out to the booster club potluck meeting, got a few more plans to finalize for the pep rally tomorrow,” said Chief Gregory, “and we thought we’d stop by for a quick little visit. Just like the old days. Here, Max, have some asparagus.”

  He held out a covered baking dish, bending back a corner of the aluminum foil. Max robotically seized a spear of asparagus and shoved it into his mouth. He in fact hated asparagus, but given that he was too mind-blown to taste a single bite, the sky was the culinary limit.

  “How was school today, Max?” Chief Gregory asked, clearly settling in for A Conversation, prompting another cringe from Max’s mom. “I heard you had a bit of trouble with the ole prince of Denmark.”

  Max paused mid-chew. “Who?”

  “Hamlet,” Audie said.

  Is my English class aired live on network television or something? How does everyone know about this? “Oh, yeah, him,” Max said. “Yeah, I don’t know what happened there. Guess I read it wrong. Shakespeare’s hard sometimes.” He went back in for more asparagus spears, as they were the only things in the room not judging him. Although, come to think of it, they looked a little disappointed in him, too.

  “You’re having trouble with your classes?” Max’s mom said, now a combination of annoyed and worried.

  “No,” Max said, not wanting to hash this out in front of the intruders. “Just English. Just Hamlet.”

  “Audie’s great at Shakespeare,” Chief Gregory said proudly. “Recite a sonnet, hon.”

  Audie dutifully recited a sonnet.

  Max gave her a look. Specifically, the kind of look that said either Who commands someone to recite a sonnet? or Who recites a sonnet on command?

  Mrs. Gregory sighed contently when Audie finished. “I’m telling you, sweetie, that voice of yours is meant for the stage. Broadway’d be lucky to have you!”

  Audie made a murderous face. “Mom.”

  “I know, I know, football needs you more.” She gave Max’s mom a conspiratorial glance. “Can’t blame a mom for trying, right?”

  Max’s mom gave a halfhearted smile.

  The room went silent for a moment. Chief Gregory rustled the aluminum foil again.

  “So, Max,” Principal Gregory said in a jolly voice, in an effort to relieve the tension, “Audie tells me you’re seeing somebody?”

  “Mom!” Audie exclaimed, horrified. She looked at Max. “I didn’t. I mean—I did, but it was just speculation—and it was divulged in confidence,” she hissed at her mother.

  Max wondered if it was wrong to pray for a meteor to strike the house. Not a big, Texas-size one; just a little speck, enough to rip a hole in the roof and land in the asparagus. “I’m not seeing anyone,” he said hastily, and mostly to his mother. “Lore and I are just friends.”

  “Oh!” Principal Gregory made a cringing oops face at her daughter. “I didn’t know!”

  “Well,” Chief Gregory said, giving Max a sly look, “who’s to say what the future holds?”

  “You guys.” Audie dug her fingers into her scalp. “Stop talking.”

  “Sorry!” Chief Gregory threw his hands up, innocent. “I’m just saying it’d be nice for Max to finally be able to go to the prom, don’t you think? Every year, off you go with Wall, and every year, there’s Max, waving the limo away with the rest of us—”

  “Look at the time!” Audie burst in. She grabbed her father with one hand and her mother with the other and dragged them both to their feet. “We have to go. Now. Or we’ll be late for the thing.” She began to shove them toward the door. “Wonderful to see you, Mrs. Kilgore! Thanks for your hospitality! We’ll show ourselves out! I tried to stop them. I’m SO sorry,” she whispered to Max on the way into the hall.

  The Gregorys did their best to protest, but when Audie wanted her way, she got it. They shouted some more goodbyes and piled out of the house, and only when Max heard the door shut was he able to summon the courage to look at his mother.

  Bad idea.

  He flinched. He couldn’t help it. Aside from the distress plain on her face, her skin looked more sallow and translucent than he’d remembered. And was her hair always that thin? He’d gone only one morning without checking in on her, but the changes in her appearance were obvious. Striking.

  She looked, Max realized, undeniably sick.

  She cupped her forehead with a shaking hand, her eyes swimming in misery. “That was mortifying, Max. How could you let them barge in like that? You know I hate visitors!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them? Where were you?”

  She was really getting worked up. Max put his hands out. “Mom, calm down.”

  “No! I will not calm—”

  She broke off with a gasp. Her white-knuckled hand clutched at her chest, and her eyes squeezed shut.

  “Mom, what’s wrong? Talk to me!”

  “My chest.” She opened her watering eyes and looked at him, pleading. “Get help.”

  Where Things Heat Up

  OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES, Max had once read, didn’t happen only when people encountered brushes with death. They could also occur in times of great trauma, and that’s exactly what was happening to him. It was as if he were watching himself from above as the panic set in, experiencing what came next only in fragmented bits and pieces—

  —scrambling for a phone, then realizing that all the lines in the house were still dead—

  —grabbing the transplant beeper—but no, that only went one way—

  —running outside, getting halfway to the Gregorys’ house before remembering that they’d left for the evening—

  —accosting a random man walking down the sidewalk, ordering him to call 911—

  —riding in the ambulance, describing his mother’s condition to the paramedics, holding her freezing hand—

  —waiting in the emergency room lobby—

  —waiting—

  —waiting—

  “Kilgore?”

  Max stirred from the half-catatonic state into which he’d fallen, slumped against the hard plastic chair. “Yes,” he said in a hoarse voice, scrambling to his feet. “That’s me.”

  The emergency room doctor, a woman with graying hair whom Max half recognized from prior hospital visits, gave him a reassuring smile. “False alarm,” she said, looking at her chart. “Your mother is fine. Well, that is to say, her condition hasn’t worsened any. Her heart is still, er . . .”

  “Fucked?” Max supplied.

  The doctor gave him a sympathetic smile. “To put it bluntly. But it has not suffered any additional trauma.”

  Relief surged into Max’s body like floodwater, dousing the flames of panic. He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “You said it was a false alarm? What does that mean?”

  The doctor frowned. “We’re not exactly sure what caused her sudden chest pains. These things happen on occasion. Could have been acid reflux, could have been . . .” A puzzled look came to her eyes. “Well, could have been any number of issues. The human body does strange things sometimes. But nothing came up on the scans, as far as I could tell, and any lingering pain has disappeared, your mother has reassured us.”

  “She’s awake? She’s okay?”

  “Yes, and asking for you.” She looked at the chart again. “I’d like to keep her overnight, run a couple more tests.
And consult with her cardiologist—Dr. Ware, is it? But all in all, I see no reason why she shouldn’t be able to go home tomorrow.”

  She escorted Max to his mother’s room, where Max thanked her and rushed to his mother’s side.

  “Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  She gave him a weak smile. “Rotten as ever.”

  Max sank into the chair beside the bed and simply breathed for a minute.

  But slowly, as the events of the previous evening came back to him, guilt crept up his neck. “Mom?” he said meekly. “I’m really sorry for what I said to you last night. I felt so bad after, and I wanted to apologize this morning, but I was ashamed, and—” He looked her in the eye. “You know I didn’t mean any of that stuff, right?”

  “Of course, hon,” she said, but Max detected a false note in her tone. “We were both angry.”

  “Yeah, but—” He took her thin hand into his. “What I said about you being a burden—it’s not true. I’m happy to take care of you. Really.”

  At this, her shoulders slumped. “I know, hon. You’re such a good kid. But maybe . . .” Her gaze drifted out the window; then she shook her head. “Hey, wait a sec. Just because my body decides to have a freak-out doesn’t mean you get off easy. What was Principal Gregory talking about? Why did you meet with her yesterday?”

  He let out a hollow laugh. “It’s nothing,” he insisted, though even he had to admit he didn’t sound very convincing. “She’s just overreacting.”

  As is a mother’s wont, she could sense something was up. “Hon? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I—” A hard, stubborn lump was forming in Max’s throat. He couldn’t stop it. He had to swallow three times before he could talk. “I’ve just been having a little trouble at school lately. There’s this, uh, bully. He’s constantly making these demands and pushing me around, and . . .”

  “Oh, Maxster.” Her eyes filled with concern, and Max felt even worse. How could he have yelled at her like that? “Do you need me to call his parents?”

  “No. No, I don’t think that’ll work.”

  “Well, did Principal Gregory talk to him? Was he in the meeting too? I can’t imagine—”

  “Mom, it’s not a big deal. I can take care of it. Just wanted to, you know . . .” He gave her a forced smile. “Keep you in the loop.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “Well . . . just avoid him as much as you can. Give him some space. Sooner or later he’ll leave you alone—”

  A timid knock came at the door, followed by an even more timid “Excuse me?”

  In walked a dark-haired, kind-eyed man wearing a nice suit, shiny shoes, and a rakish fedora. “Sorry to interrupt, but the nurse said I could duck in for a second. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  It took Max a few seconds, but he soon recognized him as the guy he’d stopped on the sidewalk, the one who’d called 911. “Oh, it’s you,” he said with a rush of gratitude. “Yeah, she’s okay, sir. Thank you so much for—”

  “I can thank him myself, Max,” his mom said, sitting up a little more in bed. “Got a bum heart, but my mouth works just fine.”

  Dimples appeared in the man’s face. “As does your smile.”

  For the first time in as long as Max could remember, color came to his mother’s cheeks. “Well, thank you,” she said. “And thank you for calling the ambulance. We don’t usually do things that melodramatically, but something’s wrong with our phones.”

  “Oh?” he said. “I happen to work for the phone company. I’d be happy to take a look at your lines, if you’d like.”

  She smiled. “And I’d be happy to have you over for dinner, as a thank-you.”

  Max’s jaw dropped.

  “How’s six o’clock?” she added.

  “Uh, Mom,” Max said, searching for excuses. This felt very strange. “The pep rally’s tomorrow at seven. I promised Audie I wouldn’t be late.”

  “Oh, you won’t be late,” she said without looking at him, her eyes still melting into the man’s. “Truly, I insist. I’ll thaw my finest pan of frozen lasagna.”

  Max felt as though he’d fallen into another dimension. Three hours ago his mother was cowering, ashamed, in the presence of treasured friends. Then this complete stranger walks in and suddenly she’s Miss Congeniality?

  The man smiled again. “Well, how could I refuse an offer like that?”

  Max’s mom nodded firmly and held out her hand. “Wonderful. See you tomorrow, then, Mr. . . .”

  “Cobbler,” he said. “Lloyd Cobbler.”

  They shook hands, and the man left. The whole encounter lasted less than a minute.

  Max warily watched him go, then turned back to his mother. “What . . . was that all about?”

  She pulled her hospital gown tighter around her, smiling shyly. “I don’t know! He was just so nice, and he really helped us out, and I just—” She laughed and shook her head. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Yeah,” Max said, studying her closely. “Me neither.”

  They sat in silence.

  “He was just so cute,” she mused after a moment. “He even—okay, this is gonna sound nuts, but don’t you think he looked a little like John Cusack?”

  Max stiffened.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, rushing out of the room and into the hallway.

  Lloyd was at the end of it, waiting for the elevator. Max grabbed him by the shoulders and whirled him around.

  “Whoa!” Lloyd said with a look of shock. “What’s wrong there, sport?”

  “Burg!” Max hissed.

  “Who?”

  “Knock it off, I know it’s you!”

  “Sorry, champ, but I don’t know what’s—”

  “Lloyd Cobbler? And you work for ‘the phone company’? Which one?”

  “The one . . . you have.”

  Max was so mad, he didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he just let them free-wheel in the air. “How could you do this to me?”

  The aura around Lloyd shimmered and disappeared, leaving nothing but Burg’s lumpy, smiling form in its place. “Uh, easily. Cusack’s one of my best impressions.”

  “No. NO. This date is not happening. I forbid it. Anything else you want, but not this.”

  Burg gave him a leering smile. “Forbid all you want, kid. And cancel the date if you must, but if you do, I can’t promise your mom won’t have any more false alarms.”

  Max stared at him, ice prickling through his veins. “You did that to her?”

  The elevator doors opened. Burg sauntered in, turned around, and tipped his hat to Max. “See you tomorrow, Shove. Six o’clock sharp.”

  Torrent

  BURG IS BAD. BURG IS BAD. BURG IS BAD.

  Those three little words ran through Max’s head on a loop as he stalked back home. Of course he’d known all along that Burg was bad. But Lore was right—he’d vastly underestimated the degree of his badness. And now it was too late to turn back.

  He burst into the kitchen, forgetting to prepare himself for the projectile cat obsessed with shredding his face. He practically batted Ruckus out of the air and headed straight for the dresser drawer in his bedroom where he kept most of his dinosaur research, away from all the dirty plaster gunk.

  Wincing at the already-swollen scratches on his hands inflicted by Ruckus, he dug through his files until he found the one he was looking for: the email from Dr. Cavendish, the professor at Harvard. It was long—three printed-out pages of thinly veiled exuberance at the thought of someone finally showing interest in his work. It was clear that the guy had been a bit nutty. Max had read through the whole thing when it first arrived, but as it was clogged with so much scientific jargon he didn’t understand, he hadn’t been able to do much with it. At the time, he’d just downloaded the high-res photos and gotten to work on the replica of the specimen.

  Now, though, he spread out the pages before him and held his breath. Maybe there was a chance that it would provide someth
ing he could work with, maybe not. Probably not a sentence that began with Dear Max, Here’s how to defeat a devil, but perhaps something about the chemical makeup of the horn, a weakness at the cellular level.

  But skimming it now, a wave of helplessness washed over him. The language was just as dense, just as hard to fathom as he’d remembered. And of what he did understand, none of it seemed particularly helpful: the specimen had not come from a particularly healthy organism (not surprising, given devils’ terrible diets); it contained scant traces of the bacteria Bartonella henselae (also not surprising, given its proximity to the woods and all the ticks therein); and certain odd properties suggested that it might not have come from a dinosaur at all (definitely not surprising, for now-obvious reasons).

  Max hurled the pages across the room in a confetti-like display of frustration. He’d never get anything from this. And it wasn’t as if he could call the professor and grill him further, either. Pretty hard to get information out of a dead guy.

  He melted into bed and stared at the ceiling, almost on the verge of tears. He hoped his mom was okay over at the hospital. He hoped Burg was safely tucked away inside his new home, not out causing trouble. He hoped Lore wasn’t too mad at him.

  I am lord of the idiots, he thought, holding his cramping stomach. I never should have gone along with this. I should have quit while I was ahead, not gotten greedy. Now I’ve unleashed a juggernaut of unstoppable evil on my mom and my poor little town, and who knows how many people he’s going to ruthlessly slaughter and it’s all my fault and Mom probably won’t live long enough for me to provide her weekly mozzarella allowance . . .

  He drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, Max’s woes continued. Because honestly, were there any rational explanations as to how he, who had gone two full school years without so much as breathing the same air as Lore Nedry, could have randomly run into her precisely when he was trying to avoid her the most?