Then a calm voice said, “Put the gun away, Chantelle. It would be useless, anyway.”
And in walked Amadeus Klimt, wearing a white coat over his suit. On his lapel was a badge like Chantelle’s. His simply said DR. K.
“Hello, Michael.”
Chantelle raised the gun to ninety degrees, then buried it somewhere within her uniform.
“You,” I said, panting slightly. “You’re Dr. K.” Or Kay, as my brain had interpreted it.
He righted the chair and picked up the card, dusting it before he dropped it on the bed. “People can find my name hard to pronounce.”
“Like my mom, you mean?” I couldn’t keep the unkind tone from my voice.
He spread his hands.
“You’ve met her, haven’t you?”
“A delightful woman. Your father always thought himself a lucky man.” He made a gesture to Chantelle to leave.
I watched her walk out of the room, but she was back within seconds, carrying a blue plastic tray. She put it on the cart and started rattling things around on it.
“What just happened?” I asked Klimt.
His gaze fell on the article. “Rafferty just happened. She has been around you for a while, I think.”
“She’s dead, Mr. Klimt.”
He brushed a clear space on my top sheet, hitched his trousers, and perched on the bed, holding one ankle against his knee. “You disappoint me, Michael. What is death to a boy with your ability — surely just another form of reality?”
“Why was this in the drawer?” I flapped the article at him.
“Because we did not want your mother or sister to see it.”
“And Freya?”
He tilted his head. The nucleus of one of his purple eyes sparkled as it caught the glare of the halogens. “That could have been avoided, but it is unimportant now.”
“She was terrified. Where is she? Why did she run?”
Klimt picked up what was left of Freya’s rose. He plucked the surviving petal, twisting it slowly in front of his face as if he could see every vein running through it. “Perhaps Freya knows more about Rafferty than she cares to admit. Read the article, Michael. It’s time you learned how far your quest has brought you.”
I looked at the picture of Rafferty Nolan. It was one of those standard high school shots. Head and shoulders, in her uniform. She was older here than in the picture at the house. A slightly gap-toothed, teenage girl. Wayward blond hair in natural ringlets. Lively eyes. Light, freckled skin. The camera loved her, as Candy might have said.
I read the headline. It told me nothing I didn’t already know. LOCAL GIRL DIES IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT. But in the white space above it, in tiny blue scrawl, Candy had written a message:
Hey, kid. I hope you’re feeling better by the time you read this. They tell me you’re going to be okay, which is a relief. Thought I’d send you the info you wanted. This is from the Post the day after the accident. It pretty much covers what happened to R. I talked to Eddie. He had nothing to add. But I did unearth two interesting facts. She was an artist, apparently, and always carried a small sketchbook with her. It disappeared that night and was never found. Also, one of the reporters who spoke to the mother found out the girl had an issue with her looks. You can’t see it in the pic, but she had a birthmark on one side of her head. Her injury was on the other side, which would have seemed awfully cruel had she lived. Apart from that, she was a regular teen, good at school, liked by everyone. Get well soon. Godspeed, C.
“A birthmark,” I whispered, touching the picture.
Klimt nodded. “Are you closer to solving the puzzle now, Michael?”
Chantelle turned around. I was aware she might have something in her hands, but I was staring into the middle distance, remembering the fuss on the playing field and the mark I’d seen on Freya’s head. “Is Rafferty …?”
“Go on,” he said. “Remember what we spoke about on the cliff. The events most people consider ridiculous, UNICORNE treats as natural phenomena.”
I tightened my gaze on Rafferty again. “Is she … living in Freya’s body?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Rafferty Nolan carried one of these. Do you know what it is?” He held up an organ donor card. “Three years ago, Freya had an operation. She had her heart replaced.”
“With Rafferty’s?”
“Yes. I believe she’s experiencing Rafferty’s presence through a mechanism known as cellular memory, and you appear to be some sort of … catalyst for it.” He swung off the bed, closing the blinds with a twist of his fingers. “I must congratulate you, Michael. You’ve done far better than I ever thought possible. I sent you out to solve the mystery of a stray dog and you’ve brought back evidence of a rare human condition. I had thought you too young to be of use to us yet, but it seems I’ve underestimated you. So we will proceed to the next level, a little earlier than anticipated.” He nodded at Chantelle. She stepped up to the bed and quickly fed a needle into my IV.
“What’s she doing?” I protested. But the drug was already in my system. I could feel my body going into slow motion. There would be no reality jumps on this occasion.
The room began to fall into a swirling hole. Klimt came closer, weaving through my gaze like a watercolor figure. “Move him downstairs,” he said to Chantelle. “Call me when his heartbeat has almost stopped.”
“Whazz hap … ning?” I managed to say.
I felt Klimt pat my arm. “It’s a little like dying, in a slow, controlled fashion. Relax, Michael. I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Hello, Michael.”
I could hear Klimt’s voice, but I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t even see myself. No hands, no feet, no visible body, just … the essence of me, floating over a never-ending whiteness. It was like looking through an aircraft window at a carpet of puffy clouds below.
“You can speak to me, Michael.” His voice was detached, yet the sound waves were everywhere. “Just concentrate your thoughts, and your words will reach me.”
“Where am I?”
“On a higher plane of consciousness. Do not be afraid. Nothing is going to hurt you.”
“Why am I here?”
“For the single reason you’ve always been here — to find your father. The search begins now, with a small experiment.”
“Experiment?” I said. There were no scientists in white coats or specimens in jars. And yet I had the strange impression that if I concentrated hard enough, I might create them from the clouds.
“Before you can begin to help us,” said Klimt, “you must learn to control your reality shifts. So far, you have experienced a shift only during moments of emotional pressure. But if you are able to jump across the time lines at will, the multiverse becomes an open book.”
A very BIG book. As far as I knew, our universe was infinite. And the multiverse sounded … bigger than that. It was one thing being able to travel across it, but you also had to know where you were going — didn’t you?
Somewhere above me I heard a click, like the shutter of a camera lens opening and closing. As if he’d recorded my thoughts, Klimt said, “Theoretically, finding your father is simple. You merely replicate what you did on the cliff. Instead of waving good-bye on the morning Thomas left for New Mexico, you imagineer a scene where you are with him. In other words, you enter his time line exactly at the point he disappeared to you.”
“But won’t that mean I’ll disappear as well?”
“Not if we train your mind carefully,” Klimt said. “In this session, we will simply be assessing how capable you are of accepting suggestions. Follow my instructions and all will be well. You may detect some areas of pressure on your head. It will feel like someone is pressing their fingers against your skull. Do not be concerned. This is part of the procedure. Do you feel it?”
“Yes.” It was exactly as he’d said. Two points of contact where my temples would be and another somewhere behind my left ear.
“I’m going to send you an image,” he sa
id. “A symbol, nothing more. It might take a moment.”
I felt the pressure points intensify briefly, as if a small charge had been sent to an electrode. And then I saw what Klimt was sending. On a cloud up ahead stood a stunning black horse. An ebony mane was trailing down the side of its neck. A horn was spiraling out of its forehead. The moment I accepted it, it blinked an eye.
“Excellent,” said Klimt. I heard the shutter sound again. “Go to it, Michael.”
I was there almost as soon as I could think it. So close that it frightened me a little. The clouds seemed to shake and the image of the unicorn immediately turned fuzzy. I heard a whirring noise above me again and a voice much deeper than Klimt’s said, “Stabilize him. Readjust the pressure.”
Externally, I sensed a moving light. A tingle began in the corner of one eye and flared for a moment in the region of my neck. The unicorn shrank away from me, until our sizes were in the proportions of a normal boy and a horse.
Klimt said, “Good. You’re doing well, Michael.”
“Who’s with you?” I asked him. “I heard a voice.”
“A … colleague,” he replied, after a pause. “Another friend of your father. Stay calm. Listen carefully. I want you to touch the unicorn now. All you have to do is imagine yourself stroking it. Can you try that for me?”
I raised an invisible hand. I let it rest on the unicorn’s mane and felt the sensation of flowing hair.
“Good,” said Klimt.
And the other voice said, “He’s ready. Take him to the next level.”
Klimt said, “Michael, this is important. I want you to think about your father now.”
The moment I heard this, my world began to shake. A spiraling wind came out of nowhere and ripped at all my senses. The unicorn’s body began to fragment as we entered some sort of escalating vortex. Pressure points popped all over my head like meteorites exploding on the surface of a planet. A new sound entered my consciousness. High-pitched, squeaking voices, gabbling in a language like nothing I’d ever heard. And although I couldn’t tell what was being said, the mood was clear: They were exchanging notes of panic.
“Strengthen the imprint,” the deep voice demanded.
And Klimt said urgently, “The unicorn, Michael. Keep your eyes on the unicorn.”
There were more odd noises. Strobing lights. A sudden rush of heat all along one arm. But I did as Klimt instructed and looked for the horse. We were spinning rapidly, out of control. But some part of me remembered my mother telling Josie how to avoid dizziness when doing ballet turns: Focus, focus on a single point. I saw the unicorn’s eye and held it steady. Gradually, the shaking and the spinning stopped and I was back, standing in front of it again.
There was a buzz and a kind of decelerating whir. I heard Klimt breathe a sigh of relief. “Well done, Michael. If that happens again, you know how to correct it. The black unicorn is your symbol of home. Place it firmly at the center of your mind and it will always bring you back to us.”
A mauve light passed across my eyes, leaving behind an afterglow of purple. The contacts on my head had now doubled in number and were feeling more like clamps than fingertips. Klimt said, “We will try that again, but differently now. Can you think of an object — a gift, perhaps — that you always associate strongly with your father?”
Only one thing came to mind. I looked at the unicorn, and there around its neck was my paper chain of dragons.
“Perfect,” said Klimt. The pressure points clustered in the center of my forehead. Whatever had been making the high-pitched squeaking noise now seemed to gurgle with pleasure. “Stay focused, Michael. The next step is crucial. I want you to take the dragons from the unicorn and attach them to yourself in some way. You may imagineer a suitable method as you wish.”
As the pressure points tingled, I raised my nonexistent hand to stroke the unicorn’s nose. It snorted and bucked, but remained stable. Reaching over its head, I took the paper chain off its neck, lifting it toward me, over the horn. But what had once been rough-cut paper was now a circle of fire-breathing creatures. They were purple, like the dragon in Rafferty’s house, linked by a band of solid silver. I thought about Rafferty and how much she would like this: a crown of living dragons.
“Michael.” Klimt’s voice clicked in right away. “Do not let your imagination wander. Go back to the paper chain. Concentrate on the gift from your father.”
“No,” said the other voice, overruling Klimt. “Let’s see where he goes with this. Tell him to put the crown on.”
Then a third voice said, “Let me do it.”
And with a sudden whoosh, Rafferty was standing where the unicorn had been, looking like her photograph in the paper. Green school uniform. Ringlets. Birthmark. Rafferty Nolan. Back from the dead.
A whole barrage of lights went off.
“Michael!” There was urgency in Amadeus Klimt. “Send Rafferty away. Go back to the unicorn.”
But Rafferty’s spirit was going nowhere. She put her hands around the crown. The dragons reared and puffed jets of smoke. “So cool,” she said. “Kneel, I want to crown you.”
I had the sensation of lowering myself.
“Michael!” Klimt’s voice came louder and stronger. A huge impression of the black unicorn’s head filled the space at Rafferty’s back. She threw up a hand and made it disappear.
I felt her place the crown on my head.
“Get him back!” I heard the deep voice thunder. “How has the girl crossed the interface? Get him BACK!”
But Rafferty seemed to be stronger than they were.
She laughed and said boldly, “Arise, Michael, Lord of Dragons.” And when I stood up, she took a pace forward and whispered in my ear, “Let’s have a little fun.”
With a whoop, she threw an arm around my neck and twisted me into her crazy world. The next thing I knew, I was flying down a log flume, carving up a runway of ice-cold water, about to hit another huge pool at the bottom. The moment the log went into the pool, the images switched and we were cresting the peak of a roller coaster track. Rafferty screamed as the car tipped forward and plunged us into a vertical descent before sweeping left on a gut-wrenching camber. I sensed it all, the steep rush of air, the g-force on my eyelids, the filth, the oil, the rick-rack of the track. I began to feel scared, really scared, like the way you do when you’re inside a nightmare and you can’t get out. All this time, I was aware that Klimt was trying to pull me clear. I could feel him in a tug-of-war with Rafferty’s consciousness.
But he was losing.
I was out of control.
The “fun” continued, into its most extreme vision yet. The roller coaster leveled out onto a horizontal stretch of track, which then morphed into a stone bridge across a narrow river. In an instant, I was standing on the wall of the bridge, holding Rafferty’s hand. For the first time, I noticed blood on her face, clawing its way from her temple to her neck. “Help me,” she whispered. “Promise you’ll help me and I’ll let them have you back.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Her green eyes narrowed. And in a voice like a wind from another world, she said, “Bring Freya to me.”
“I promise,” I replied.
And then we jumped.
The dragon crown tumbled toward the water. At first, the river was a dark gray slab. But with every frantic flap of my hands, it swelled into a raging torrent, foaming over rocks as sharp as talons. I screamed, certain I was going to die. Then I felt a powerful tug around my ankles and a cord pulled me back, and dropped me again and pulled me back, and dropped me and pulled me back, and …
… My eyes fluttered open. The bridge and the water and Rafferty were gone and I was in some kind of darkened laboratory, strapped to a table inside a glass pod. The pod was filled with a warm yellow fluid. I was immersed in the fluid and yet still breathing. Two pipes spouting from the pod were connected to a series of filters and pumps. Through the glass, I could see large banks of machinery. Small lights chasing other sm
all lights. Lab technicians, flicking lights. Fixed above the pod on a semicircular track was a light shaped like a giant eye. Its outer edges were glowing mauve.
“Drain the tank,” said the voice I’d heard beside Klimt’s. “Erase all traces. Make sure he remembers nothing.”
The pod jerked and began to tilt. As it lifted me upright, I saw a thickset man in a pin-striped suit step out of the lab through an unlit doorway. I didn’t see his face. But across the room, in a pod identical to mine, I saw Amadeus Klimt. He was jerking, as if he’d had a massive shock. Suddenly, his head spilled violently sideways. Part of his hair had melted or burned. He gave another short spasm and an eye exploded from his head. I saw no blood, just a twist of wires. My heart rate tripled. But what I saw next really freaked me out. A creature not unlike a pale blue octopus crawled over Klimt’s face and started to repair the damage to his eye, moving its tentacles like nothing I’d ever seen. My mind was just about coping with that when a similar creature appeared in front of me. I struggled against the clamps that were holding me. I screamed, but no sound came out of my mouth. The creature waggled a limb. From the end of the limb came a small, dark spike. I screamed as the creature put the spike inside my nose. A white light lit up the space behind my eyes.
And then I went blank.
My gran once told me that the first real sign of turning sea lion (I think she meant senile) is when you walk into a room to fetch something, but then you can’t remember what you came in for. That was how I felt when I woke the next morning. I knew I had been on some kind of journey, but I couldn’t remember a single detail. It was just as if someone had taken a brush and whitewashed a crucial part of my memory. It even took me several seconds to place Chantelle. As I stirred, she said, “Good sleep, Michael?”
I coughed and brought up something from my chest.
She was there in a moment, with a tissue, to catch my phlegm.
“My head hurts,” I mumbled. And my nose, strangely. I placed a finger inside it and broke a slight crust of blood against my nail. “Ow, my nose is sore.”