The Trap Read online

  I came up next to him, and waited. I knew he would speak.

  “No one cares,” he said after a moment.

  “It’s not true, Alan,” I said. “We all care. We’ll find him, I know we will.”

  “I know you don’t like him,” said Alan. “I don’t blame you, Henry. Sometimes I don’t like him either.” He paused, still staring off down the row. “But you have to understand. He raised me, as much as anyone did, after Mom left, and Dad was playing ball and traveling. He put me to bed at night. He cooked. Hell, he taught me to read, Henry.” Alan fell silent. I put a hand on his shoulder. I remembered what Mr. Brody had told me, in the graveyard, about everyone being related because we all came out of the Big Bang. It felt kind of like that now. Someone had gone missing, and everyone was affected by it.

  Then I heard a sound behind us, and turned to see Helen and Nicki emerge. They came up to us without speaking, and we all hugged in a group.

  Helen leaned forward with a laugh and tipped us over, and we collapsed into a friendly pile.

  Suddenly Nicki exclaimed, “There it is!” She reached out and plucked the missing ball from the cornstalks.

  When Helen and I finally rolled up to the house on our bikes, Mom and Dad were waiting, as we knew they would be, sitting at the kitchen table and fuming over our absence. They were in their work clothes, getting ready to leave.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” said Dad icily as we entered.

  “You both,” said Mom, “are in big trouble.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Helen, suddenly charging past me. Wow, my twin sister—she never stops. She reached into her back pocket and produced a piece of paper, which she smacked down on the kitchen table. “If you can’t take care of us,” she said loudly, “we’ll take care of ourselves.”

  I had no idea what this was about. Mom and Dad looked at the paper, and then at Helen, who said, “I got a job, and Henry got one too—at Jefferson Used Book and Coin. He’s starting this weekend.”

  Of course, this wasn’t totally true . . . but it was kind of true. I craned my neck to get a look at Helen’s piece of paper. It was a pay stub from Marlon’s Pizza Pies in downtown Farro. My brain spun. Helen? Pizza pies?

  “Is this true, Henry?” said Mom.

  “Yes,” I said.

  No one spoke for a few seconds.

  Then, slowly, Dad put both of his hands palm down on the table. He looked between them, where his thumbs were almost touching. “There was a guy I knew,” he said.

  I’m not sure how I could tell, but I was certain that Dad was going to say something about the war. My heart thudded. Next to me, Helen took a deep breath. She’d asked Dad about Korea tons of times, but he’d never said anything.

  “Name of Davis,” Dad said now, mumbling a little, as if he wasn’t talking to us, but just to himself. “Private first class.” He kept his eyes on the space between his hands. “We were in the city, and it was getting dark. Then I heard shots. We ran. Took cover in an alley. But Davis wasn’t with us. He was behind, around the corner, and I saw him. Lying out there on his back, in the street. And making a sound, like gargling. Like gargling before bed, like a Listerine ad, because they shot him . . . in the throat.” Dad paused. He took a breath. “We wanted to go get him, but we couldn’t move from cover. They were pounding us, sniper fire, automatic fire, artillery. Then the North Koreans . . . they went up to Davis. And I watched . . . as they . . . they stripped him. They took his gun, his belt. Jacket. Helmet. Boots. Right off him, while he was still trying to breathe. They took everything. And they left him there, naked in the street. He died there.” Dad brought his hands together on the tabletop, lacing his fingers, like the curtains closing at the end of a play.

  “I never thought I’d see that again,” he said slowly. “Taking everything from a man while he’s still living. But here it is. Right here in my own home, it’s happening.” His eyes had gone glassy, and he wiped them with his sleeve. Then he stood, turned crisply as if he were on the parade field, and walked out the kitchen door, letting the screen slap closed behind him.

  Mom was just as startled as we were, I think. She wiped her own eyes, and gestured to the chairs opposite her at the kitchen table. Helen and I sat wordlessly.

  “You’re good kids,” she said. “You didn’t have to do this. We’ll get by.”

  Helen had started this off, and I felt it was up to me to finish it. “You guys are wrong about Nicki and Alan,” I said. I didn’t provide any reason why this was true. I just said it, as if it had been established in court.

  Mom nodded. “Tonight is your father’s last shift at the yard,” she said. “Please, both of you, go easy on him. He’s struggling.”

  “We’re struggling too,” said Helen.

  “I know,” said Mom. She paused. “Henry, will you make dinner? I bought ingredients for three-bean soup.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Mom stood, and followed Dad out. Within thirty seconds, the car backed out of the driveway and disappeared up the road.

  I turned to Helen. I saw her eyes were red—I think not so much from Dad’s story, as from the fact that he’d told it. After all of this time, he’d finally trusted us with something that happened to him in the war. I’m sure my eyes were red too. “You . . . you have a job?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” said Helen, sniffling, but smiling at what a dummy I was. “I found that in the trash at school.”

  I shook my head in wonder. She had no fear.

  I started on dinner. I made a salad with shredded carrots, apples, raisins, sliced almonds, and mayonnaise. I made three-bean soup. As I was sifting flour for blueberry muffins, Helen entered and said, “You’re going to town in here.”

  “Trying to keep my mind off things,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, Henry—we’ll rescue you tonight,” she said, and she kept me company after that.

  Eventually, it was bedtime. We got into our pajamas and met in the bathroom to brush our teeth. Helen was all dressed up again in nice jeans and her favorite red shirt, hoping to impress Alan with her subtle form. I noticed that she’d put on some of Mom’s lipstick.

  “Do you want me to stay in your room, Henry?” she asked. “I could bring in my sleeping bag.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said.

  We hugged in the hall and I went into my room. I got into bed, propped up my arm, and started counting, but I couldn’t stay focused. There were too many other thoughts breaking in.

  I stood and went to my desk, and got pencil and paper. Before, whenever I’d written things down, it was because I wanted to change something that had happened. But this time I wrote things down as they were, or as near as I could. I wasn’t trying to change anything. I was trying, with all I had in me, to understand. The pencil seemed to move of its own accord—Møller, Carl, the graveyard, Airman Crusader, the ghost of Joseph Brody, my dad . . . even my fears about the Fall Formal flowed onto the page.

  And amazingly, I started to relax. My mind cleared. I felt calm enough to lie down again. Maybe that’s one reason people write—to have a place to put everything so you can get some sleep.

  I HEARD A LONG NOTE, and right away thought it was those branches sawing behind the graveyard. But when I listened again, it didn’t sound quite like that. It was a voice—a human voice. Someone was singing. I opened my subtle eyes and saw not stars above me and gravestones all around, but my ceiling, and my bedroom. A few colorful snowflakes wafted by.

  On the radio, Elvis performed the last lines of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and the station went off the air. I lay listening to the static. I could hardly believe it. I was home.

  I was once more stuck in the paralysis, and was about to start rocking myself out of my body when a voice spoke, off to my left.

  “You have quite a way with words,” it said. I recognized it instantly, just like before. It was raspy and quiet. At this point I didn’t have any doubts that my midnight visitor was Abe Møller.
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br />   I rolled my eyes around until I caught sight of him, standing over by my desk. He was looking at the sheets I’d written before I fell asleep—my whole analysis of the situation.

  “Don’t read that,” I said.

  “Not to worry, young man,” came the reply, “there’s nothing new here for me, except to discover what a fine writer you are. You should develop your gift. The written word is a powerful thing. Did you know that books create their own flux streams? Fascinating.”

  Møller’s tone of voice was friendly in a way, but the affability stuck to the surface, like the frozen top of a lake.

  He moved away from my desk and came closer. As before, I could make out that he was wearing a set of blue-striped pajamas and what looked like a white hat.

  Then I noticed something new, or rather, something missing. I didn’t see any flakes coming from him—neither rainbow flakes nor white ones. There were no pale flames licking up either. I badly wished I could turn my head to get a better look.

  “I think we decided last time,” said Møller, “that you might ask me a question next we met. Have you got one?”

  I did. It was the question that lay beneath this whole adventure, really—the single thing that had set it all in motion. I didn’t expect Møller to give me a straight answer, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.

  “Did you kill Carl?” I said.

  “Hmm,” said Møller, meditatively. “It’s unfortunate that you called the number you found in that book, young man. Now we may never properly know what has happened to Carl. You’ve forced me to rush things.” He didn’t sound angry about this, but was very matter-of-fact. “I overheard you, of course, in the graveyard with Joseph, talking about the Big Bang last night.”

  “I knew you were listening,” I said.

  “Let me explain properly to you,” said Møller, “what Joseph did not. Before our universe began, Henry, everything was a single point of light—a perfect white dot. This point exploded outward into creation. Joseph thinks this was a good thing, but he’s wrong. The universe is degenerating, Henry. For instance, did you know that mankind was originally a white race? The first men were white, and only over time devolved into the colors we have now—red, yellow, brown. Likewise with the rainbow of flakes that comes from your skull, which is called a flux stream—did you know that babies produce only white? Through life, this perfection is lost. We grow weak and die.” He paused, and stepped toward my window to look outside, which took him fully out of my range of vision.

  “What does it mean to you to be a good person?” he said. “Before you answer, let me tell you what it means to me. For me, goodness requires that I resist death, both for my own sake and also for the sake of all men. I believe we have spirits that can survive forever, if we learn the way. That discovery will be my great gift—to myself, and to all mankind. Now you tell me, Henry, what does it mean to be good?”

  Well, I just can’t answer that kind of question on the spot. So instead of answering, I said, “What do you want? Why are you here?”

  Møller nodded, accepting that I wouldn’t answer. “It’s simple. I want the box that Joseph gave you. And in the service of goodness, I’m prepared to take it, whether you give it to me or not.”

  For a moment I was kind of glad to be paralyzed. I think it kept me from acting as scared as I was. And because I couldn’t move or run or do much of anything, I remembered a great piece of advice I’d gotten not that long ago, from my twin sister. “Yell for me,” she’d said. “I’m right down the hall.” I took a deep breath and called out with all I had in me: “Helen-n-n! Hel-l-l-p!” My subtle voice rang through my room and, I hoped, through the whole house.

  “I’ll see you soon, Henry,” Møller said, calmly. “When you want to find me, I’ll be in the graveyard.”

  “Why would I want to find you?” I asked. But I received no reply. Møller was gone, as fast as last time, vanished into thin air.

  Then another voice sounded. It was a man’s voice, coming in through my window from outside, down by the front of the house. “Hello up there—is everything all right?”

  I didn’t think everything was all right, but since I didn’t know who was asking, I didn’t reply. Instead, I calmed myself as best I could and began moving my eyes back and forth, sloshing myself out of my stuck body. Soon, thankfully, I made the tip and found myself lying face down on the floor.

  I stood and looked at my body in bed, left arm resting where it had fallen. I seemed unharmed. I went to the closet mirror and examined my subtle form. Everything was as it should be. There I was in my Saturn shirt and blue pajama pants. There was no white jaw clamped to my leg. One thing was different, though—at my waist was the leather box Mr. Brody had given me. It was integrated with my new outfit. Instead of being secured to the leather belt on my jeans, it was now attached to the drawstring of my pajama pants.

  “Are you all right up there?” said the voice from outside. I snuck up to the window from beneath, and peeked carefully out.

  There was a man below, pulsing multicolor flakes up into the night. He was a black man. He wore some kind of uniform—a green jacket with epaulets, tough pants with perfect creases, and black patent leather shoes. He held a clipboard and a pen. At his side was a large square case, hung from his shoulder by a strap.

  I hesitated. I’d just gotten out of a bad jam, and wasn’t overeager to leap into the next one. However, something occurred to me. I’d yelled to my sister for help, and she had not arrived.

  My heart thudded in my chest as Møller’s final words came back to me. I rushed into the hall, to Helen’s room, ghosted through her door, and approached her bed.

  She lay atop her covers, wearing the yellow sundress Mom had gotten her last spring. I guessed she’d put it on for Alan’s sake—still hoping he’d ask her to the dance.

  But more important than any of this, her body was empty. Her subtle self was not in it, or anywhere in the room.

  Because she had gone out—out to the graveyard to rescue me. She, and Alan and Nicki.

  I took a deep breath, trying to compose myself as I came to grips with the situation. My friends would not be rescuing me tonight, as we’d planned. No. I would be rescuing them.

  I put one hand on the box at my waist. Mr. Brody had said it contained the secret to immortality—what Møller had been searching for. But he also said it was a weapon. I only hoped it would unlock at the right moment.

  “Do you need help?” said the man from outside, his voice ascending through Helen’s open window.

  I went downstairs. I paused before the front door, scared. I had no idea what was about to happen. I only knew that my friends were in danger, and now was not the time to sit around debating the pros and cons. I tried to imagine Helen charging forward, full of certainty, responding as the situation demanded.

  I stepped through the door.

  The man was standing on the front drive. He still had the big case hanging from a strap at his shoulder, and his clipboard and notepad in hand. “Are you Henry Nilsson?” he asked as I appeared.

  “That’s right,” I said. He had a neat mustache and a large jaw. I noticed right away that he didn’t seem unfriendly. He was the first black person I had ever talked to. “I have three other names,” he said, glancing at his clipboard. “Helen Nilsson, Nicki Chen, and Alan Dunn. Are they here?”

  “They need help,” I said. I paused and then, trying to sound authoritative, added, “Who are you?”

  “Sergeant Ray Johnson, at your service,” said the man. “NFTSA.”

  As he said it, I saw the insignia above his left breast pocket—the exact same as the blue stamp in the used book. “The stamp!” I exclaimed. “What is that? What does it mean?”

  Sergeant Johnson looked surprised. “You called us,” he said. “Where did you find the number? In a marked book?”

  “It was in the Subtle Travel book,” I said, “at Jefferson Used Book and Coin. But Sergeant, what did it mean? What happened when I dialed the number
?”

  “The acronym,” he said , indicating the patch on his pocket, “stands for National Flux Travel Security Administration. You dialed our remote reset call-in number, which caused two things to happen. First, it replaced your subtle form into your physical body. Second, it located you and flagged you as an undocumented flux traveler.”

  “I . . . I don’t understand,” I said, simultaneously looking up the dark road. I didn’t have all night to stand here talking. “Sergeant,” I said, “there’s an emergency.”

  “All right,” he replied, “but first, I have something to give you.” He reached into a pocket and retrieved a small card that looked like a library card, and handed it to me. On the face side it showed the emblem we’d seen stamped in the book—the human form rising out of itself. The other side was printed with information.

  “OFFICIAL USFT PASSPORT FOR HENRY L. NILSSON,” it read. (My middle name is Leo.) Next to this were my birth date, my address, and my social security number.

  “Everything spelled correctly?” asked Sergeant Johnson.

  “Yes,” I said. “But what is it?”

  “NFTSA is a government organization that exists here on the flux plane,” he replied. “What the Brody-Møller book calls the subtle plane. We regulate flux travel within the borders of the United States. Keep your passport on your person at all times,” he said, moving into what sounded like a set speech. “If asked for it by any representative of NFTSA or other recognized government flux agency, you must provide it. Every citizen of the United States has the right to travel, but every flux traveler must register with NFTSA and keep their registration current. Do you understand these rights and responsibilities?”

  I nodded. It was a lot to take in—the subtle plane had always seemed like a place for only me and my friends. Discovering that there was a whole federal agency in charge of it was a big shift. But it made sense. I mean, if there were books about how to do all of this, why wouldn’t people know about it?