The Trap Read online

  “Don’t be nervous,” said the sergeant. “This is standard protocol. Now, regarding your emergency . . .”

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” I said, already walking out toward the road. “Have you ever heard of a man named Abe Møller?”

  Sergeant Johnson stopped in his tracks. “Henry,” he said, “you need to tell me what you’re getting us into. Now.” His voice was quiet, intense.

  “So you have heard of him,” I said. “He’s been out in the woods here. I think he just kidnapped my friends, and he might have killed my best friend’s brother, Carl.” That seemed to cover it. Then I added, “And he’s been spying on Joseph Brody.”

  This last fact seemed to newly alarm the already-startled sergeant. “Joseph Brody?” he said. “But I have a report that he died . . .” he started flipping through some of the paperwork on his clipboard.

  “He did die,” I said, “but he survived it.”

  Despite holding his clipboard at the ready, the sergeant had written nothing. Now he put the cap back on his pen. He took the square case from his side and laid it on the ground. “Excuse me,” he said. He unlatched the top of the case, opened it, and took out a telephone, whose wire went down inside the case. He held the receiver to his ear and dialed. “Sergeant Johnson for Colonel Dattilo,” he said. He paused a moment, then continued. “Colonel, we have a situation. I have report on Abe Møller in . . .” he paused, then said to me, “This town is called Farro?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” I said.

  “Farro, Iowa,” he said into the phone.

  The voice on the other end spoke briefly, and by its tone, I took the remark to be something along the lines of “That is impossible, Sergeant, you must be mistaken.”

  “Sir, the report is clear. The witness is with me now. Furthermore, he claims that Joseph Brody, that is the Joseph Brody, the author . . . that he has achieved posthumous coherence.”

  This time the voice on the phone spoke longer.

  “Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Johnson, and then, “Understood.” He put the phone back, closed up the case, and shouldered it again. “We’re going to have to do our best for the moment, Henry,” he said, sizing me up as you might a newly conscripted deputy. “My unit will send backup, but they need to fall asleep and then transport here. It will take some time. If we can find Møller, and keep him within sight for long enough . . . well, we might just have a chance of apprehending him.” Sergeant Johnson took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was afraid.

  THE SUBTLE NIGHT wasn’t the same as the regular night. There were different sounds, and my subtle eyes could see everything, even though all the shapes were black. Also, the sergeant and I each had our own personal torch in the form of our blazing heads, which cast flickering reddish shadows on fence posts, trees, and up the road as we headed out the highway toward the turnoff for North Half.

  “So, Henry, tell me what’s been happening,” said the sergeant.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions first,” I said. “Everyone keeps asking me things, and never telling me anything. But I need to know: Who is Abe Møller?”

  “He’s the most wanted criminal in the U.S. flux plane,” replied Sergeant Johnson. “He has committed countless crimes in the name of research, for years. And has evaded us at every turn.”

  “What is flux? I heard Møller use that word, too.”

  “Sorry. I’m not used to explaining these things to civilians. Abe Møller is a scientist who has a particular research specialty—a substance known as fluxus achromia.” The sergeant gestured upward, at the flames and snowflakes above us. “These are flux streams,” he said. “The colors, hues, and shapes differ somewhat from person to person, as they’re the result of our mental activity.”

  “Is it our thoughts?” I asked.

  “We don’t really know,” he replied. “Part of it seems to be thoughts or intentions or beliefs, but our ideas about this are largely speculation.”

  “So, if this is flux, what’s fluxus achromia?” I asked.

  “It’s white in color,” said the sergeant. “Sometimes it’s called bleach. You might say that it’s empty—whatever it is that gives color to a flux stream is absent from the bleach. And while we can’t say much about the meaning of the various colors of flux, we have learned a thing or two about bleach.” He paused. “Everywhere we’ve found it, we’ve also found . . . cruelty.”

  I thought of Carl’s disappearance, and of my friends who were now out in the woods with Abe Møller, and I picked up the pace a little. “When Mrs. Brody talked about him,” I said, “she talked about contempt. About people who don’t care who they hurt.”

  “Henry,” said the sergeant, “you’re sure you really saw him—Joseph Brody—after his death? With your own eyes? Spoke to him?”

  I didn’t reply. The highway bent before us off to the right at the turnoff for North Half. The trees came up thickly on both sides, and the black, narrow dirt lane snaked ominously off into the woods.

  “Sergeant,” I said, “this is the turnoff. The graveyard isn’t far.”

  “Well, Henry, now it’s your turn,” he replied. “What do I need to know before we go in there?”

  “That my friends are in trouble,” I said. I paused, then gestured to the waist of my pajama pants, at the leather box. “Mr. Brody gave me this,” I said. “He said it contains the key to immortality. Abe Møller wants it. But Mr. Brody also said whatever is in here . . . is some kind of weapon.”

  “You haven’t opened it?” asked Sergeant Johnson.

  “It’s locked, sir. Mr. Brody said it will open when the time is right.” I paused. “I think when I called you, it interrupted whatever Møller was trying to do to Carl. He was experimenting on him, trying to get him to survive dying. ‘Posthumous coherence,’ I heard you say. That’s what he wants—to be immortal. Maybe he failed with Carl, I don’t know. But I think he needs to take this box from me to finish what he started.”

  The sergeant frowned, which did not fill me with confidence. But we had to keep going.

  The forest pressed in on us once we turned alongside the gorge. The black trunks of the maple trees cluttered the darkness, and everything felt very close.

  “Henry,” said Sergeant Johnson, his voice low, “you said you talked to Joseph Brody out here. What did he say?”

  “He had a key for opening one of the traps,” I said. “And we decided he’d free Mr. McTavish, my teacher, who was also trapped.” I paused. “Møller set those to try to catch Mr. Brody, didn’t he?”

  “Probably,” said the sergeant, “but when he caught you instead, he simply monitored the situation. What kind of key did Mr. Brody have, Henry? Did you see it?”

  “It looked like a regular house key,” I said.

  “What color?”

  “Black.” When the sergeant didn’t reply, I turned to find him staring at me.

  “Maybe it appeared black, in the darkness,” he said. “But it’s actually some other color.”

  “No, it was black,” I said. “Black as tar.”

  The sergeant looked for a moment like he was going to stop and use his field telephone again, but he just shook his head. “If you’re correct, Henry, you may be the first person to have ever seen fluxus polychromia—black flux, which is sometimes called ink.”

  “Poly . . . that’s many, right?” I said. “So is it the opposite of the bleach?”

  Sergeant Johnson nodded. “Ink has never been observed,” he said, “but we’ve theorized about it. The opposing quality to the bleach.”

  “So if the bleach is about cruelty,” I said, “then ink would be about . . . um, kindness?”

  “Understanding would be a better term,” said the sergeant. “You see, the colors of our flux streams indicate connections. We don’t know what they mean, but we do know they show our connection to other people, ideas, emotions, beliefs. This is what the bleach lacks. It is unaffiliated. It rejects, refuses. It is cruel. The ink,
on the other hand, represents an equally powerful connection—an understanding.”

  We reached the sign for Longbelly Graveyard. In the distance, I heard the two branches scraping, the lonely voice of the forest, which never rested.

  WE WERE ONLY about twenty yards off from the graveyard. It was a little hard to navigate—even though we could both see in the dark, the closeness of the trees to the narrow road was disorienting.

  We passed through the gate and I could see, far inside in the midst of the hundreds of standing gravestones, rainbow snowflakes—my friends, I thought. I started to rush forward, but the sergeant put one hand on my shoulder. “Wait,” he said. He was right. We had no idea what the situation was. We didn’t know if—

  Sergeant Johnson stumbled and fell, dropping his clipboard and the case that contained his field phone.

  Clamped to his leg was the white jaw of a bleach trap, the teeth firmly fixed.

  “Henry,” said the sergeant urgently, “open your box.”

  I reached to my waist and pulled the flap, but it wouldn’t budge. “Go—sneak behind, through the forest,” the sergeant hissed. “Try to open it again. I’ll distract him if I can.”

  I was glad the sergeant didn’t panic, because I was ready to. Maybe they teach you in the military to be calm under fire, or maybe he just had the right personality. Whatever the reason for his self-control, I thankfully took his advice.

  I dodged away into the forest. As soon as I was clear of the sergeant I heard him shout, “Abraham, it’s Johnson here. Come out. I’m trapped, I can’t hurt you. I want to talk.” The salutation was so familiar, it made me wonder how long the sergeant had been after Møller. Maybe a long time.

  I headed quickly through the darkness into the forest, and the trees closed in around me, obscuring (I hoped) the bright flag of my spectral flux. I considered rushing to my friends, who I was sure were in peril, but I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what to do, and it was horrible. It was all up to me.

  I moved much faster than I could have run in my real body, because I didn’t have to go around trees—I went straight through them, glimpsing the concentric rings and the center pole of heartwood, smelling the sap, then pressing on.

  When I thought I was safely behind the graveyard, I paused and attended to the case at my side.

  The right moment that Mr. Brody had spoken of had to be now. I grasped the flap—but it still wouldn’t budge. I slid the box off my pajama belt so I could wrestle it with both hands.

  “Come on,” I said. I pried. I put it on the ground and pinned it with one foot, but it held as firm as a honey jar lid.

  I didn’t know what to do. This would have been a great moment for a pros and cons list.

  “Can’t open it?” said a voice from nearby. “That’s too bad.”

  A form stepped from behind a nearby tree.

  Abe Møller was an old man, of medium build. He was wearing a set of pajamas with vertical blue stripes, and his feet were bare. His face was leathery, with sunken cheeks, and he looked tired, but there was also an unmistakable amusement smoldering in his eyes. More than any of that, though, one other thing distinguished him in the dark, subtle night, which was this: he had snuck up on me. He hadn’t been given away by his flux stream, because he didn’t have one. There were no flames burning on his head. Where in this strange world you’d normally see the fire, and the flakes pouring out, there was . . . ice. White ice, like a frozen lake—what I’d previously thought was a white hat.

  “Think for a moment, young man,” said Møller, “about your predicament. I know you’re a thoughtful sort. You have two options. One, you give me that box. Two, I take it.”

  “You can’t hurt me,” I said. “Subtle forms are invulnerable.”

  Møller nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “I can’t hurt you here, and I can’t hurt your friends. I’m only glad I was able to use them to draw you out, Henry, because it will give what I say next a little more weight.”

  He paused, and I just stared at him. I knew I couldn’t run. I waited, wishing in some part of my mind that, somehow, this could all be stopped. That the clocks would stop ticking. That the world would stop turning.

  “Let me tell you a trick I learned, many years ago,” Møller continued, as casually as if explaining how to boil an egg. “The trick is separating the subtle form from the physical one, and keeping both of them awake.” He waited for this to sink in. Then he said, slowly, his tone going dark, “I am in your house right now, Henry. I am standing by your bed. I may not be able to hurt you here, but I can certainly hurt you there.”

  I willed myself to wake up at home. I willed that somehow my body there would get up and run off, or that I would cry out for my parents, but I didn’t have that kind of skill.

  My fear seemed to amuse Møller. “You’re weak, my boy, wasting all of your energy on that bonfire.” He gestured at the rainbow of my flux stream, twisting above me. “If you could learn to retain that for yourself, as I’ve done, maybe you’d be strong enough to get out of this fix.”

  “It’s not like that,” I said. “You’re wrong.”

  Møller smiled. “Some people say those flakes symbolize friendship. Have you heard that? Yes, some people think your flux spectrum shows your connection to other people—your love for them, maybe. But that’s the opposite of what it is. Henry, you have opened your gates to the invaders. The fire you send up is the city of yourself, burning. The influence of others destroys you. Only if you smother it will you survive.”

  “No, you have to let it burn,” I said. “It’s . . . it’s a distress call.” And just then a sound came from behind us.

  Møller spun around as a figure stepped from a dense copse of maples.

  Funny how earlier when I’d thought that everything was up to me, I’d forgotten about a certain someone.

  Mrs. Brody was dressed in a flannel nightgown, and she wasn’t stooped as I had always seen her, but was unbent by the years. I noticed something else, too. Her flux stream was like her husband’s, deeply diverse, with no clear boundary between one hue and the next, strikingly beautiful.

  “My husband sends you his greetings,” she said to Møller, “from his graveside, where he’s freeing your prisoners.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Møller.

  “Nothing is impossible,” replied Mrs. Brody, “for the one who has the key.” She reached into a pocket of her gown and pulled out a small key—pure black, like an obsidian arrowhead.

  “Ink!” said Møller. The surprise in his voice was the first real emotion I’d seen in him.

  But the surprises were only beginning. To either side of Mrs. Brody, three more people suddenly emerged from the trees—Sergeant Johnson alongside two other uniformed NFTSA agents, a man and a woman.

  Møller’s eyes widened. He reached with his right hand and pinched himself on the left arm—like you might do in a dream if you wanted to wake yourself.

  And he vanished, just like that.

  “He’s reset himself!” said the sergeant.

  “I know where he is,” I said, quickly. “He’s in my house. But I bet he’s running now!”

  Sergeant Johnson turned to the other agents. “Reset, and call the local police!”

  The other agents did what Møller had done—pinched themselves and disappeared.

  And so it was just the three of us, standing in the dark forest.

  The sergeant turned to me. “Henry,” he said, “you’ve just handed us the best chance we’ve had to capture Abe Møller in years. I can hardly believe it. And so I must go, follow my men—”

  “No, Sergeant,” said Mrs. Brody. “You must stay here. This night is not over yet.” She turned to me and smiled. “The alien,” she said, “has answered your distress call.”

  MRS. BRODY LED US quickly into the graveyard. We approached from the rear and arrived steps away from Mr. Brody’s fresh grave, where masses of flowers were still piled from his funeral.

  “Helen!” I shouted when I
saw my sister.

  “Henry!” she exclaimed.

  Nicki and Alan were there too, and we came together in a big hug, our flux streams boiling up into a squally bonfire. They’d all been trapped, but those jaws were now disarmed and lay sprung and harmless near the grave.

  “Henry, I’m so glad you’re okay,” said Nicki.

  “I’m glad you are too,” I said. I looked around. “Where’s Mr. Brody? Didn’t he free you all?”

  “He did,” said Helen, “but he left. He said he’d come back.”

  The sergeant approached the four of us. “Excuse me,” he said, “Henry, are these your friends? Helen Nilsson, Alan Dunn, and Nicki Chen?”

  “Everyone, this is Sergeant Johnson,” I told them. “He’s from NFTSA—who we called.”

  The sergeant produced three more of the passports and handed them out. “Keep your passport on your person at all times,” he recited. “If asked to present it by any representative of NFTSA or other recognized government flux agency, you must comply . . .” he ran through the speech.

  “Sergeant,” said Alan, “my card looks different from theirs.” He held it up, and I read it. It said, “OFFICIAL USFT PASSPORT FOR ALAN M. DUNN, ISSUED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE SOVEREIGN NEZ PERCE NATION.”

  “The Nez Perce nation is fully sovereign on the flux plane,” said Sergeant Johnson. “It is its own country, with its own laws. But remember that physically, you’re still subject to the jurisprudence of the United States, and remain a U.S. citizen.”

  “That seems kind of confusing,” said Nicki.

  “It is,” the sergeant agreed. Just then, Mrs. Brody approached, and the sergeant turned to her. “I’d like to introduce myself to you officially, ma’am,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Ray Johnson. And I am, well, a big fan of your writing. The International Understanding series had a profound impact on me.”

  “I’m glad to know it, Sergeant,” said Mrs. Brody. “I’m always happy to meet my readers.” She paused. “Thank you for coming here when I know duty calls you elsewhere.”