The Trap Page 5

  I started rocking my eyes quickly, hoping to shake myself out of my body, but the man said, “That won’t work if you rush it. Just be still for a moment, son. No harm will come. I have a question to ask you.”

  I surprised myself by replying—apparently my mouth could work as well as my eyes. “Who are you?” I said.

  “Next time we meet, you can question me,” said the man, “but tonight I’m going to question you, Henry.” I didn’t know when these turns had been established, but I didn’t challenge him. My blood ran cold when he said my name. How did he know me? “You’ve been awake in the subtle world for at least a night, so tell me honestly, while you’ve been traveling, have you met a violinist?”

  I’m not sure what question I was expecting, but that was definitely not it. It was so strange, I thought I must have misheard him. “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “A violinist,” the man repeated. “A player of the violin. Do you know what a violin is? This man is very dangerous. He is a criminal, and I’m looking for him. I’m asking for your help.”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t met any . . . violinists.”

  “He’s clever,” said the man. “Clever and treacherous. If you see him, I hope you’ll let me know.”

  “How do I do that?” I said.

  The man didn’t answer. He had vanished.

  I hadn’t ever known a person to disappear into thin air before, and I didn’t like it. I rolled my eyes all around in my head and listened carefully. . . but he really was gone. Of course, if someone can disappear, it follows that they can reappear, and I waited for a sudden voice to come out of the shadows. Eventually, though, as I watched the colorful snowflakes lob through the air above me, I calmed down enough to start rocking my eyes properly, and soon I managed to break through the paralysis and roll out of myself.

  I stood and immediately surveyed the room, verifying that I was alone. On my bed, my body slept peacefully. My shiner was still visible, even in the dark. “They call me Bull’s Eye,” I whispered.

  “Henry,” said a voice from behind.

  I jumped, and turned to find Helen standing in my doorway. When I saw her, I said the first thing that came to my mind. Shouted it, actually: “Your head is on fire!” I said.

  “So’s yours,” Helen retorted. “Look in the closet mirror.”

  We both stood before it. There I was, a scrawny kid wearing blue-striped boxer shorts and a faded blue pajama top with a picture of Saturn on it. My big ears were sticking out as always. But over those ears, things were not as usual. Instead of some close-cut blond hair, my forehead disappeared into what really did look like flames, roaring bright. And out of those flames, snowflakes. But it wasn’t like what I saw last night with Carl, the white steamy clouds. What came out of my flames were snowflake rainbows—all kinds of colors of flakes. I realized that I was the source of my room’s snowstorm.

  Helen was wearing her nightdress, which she hated—a cotton shift that reached her ankles, with flowers stitched around the hem. (Our grandmother had given it to her last Christmas.) More to the point, her flaming head was producing the same stuff as mine.

  Both of us held up our hands tentatively, near the flames, which were not hot. We touched them. To me, it felt like when you stick your hand out the window of a moving car. There was no heat, just a breeze, which blew the flakes upward. I could touch the top of my head, too—it was there, inside the blaze, solid as ever. The snowflakes landed on us, melted, and sank in, but they weren’t cold.

  Helen, always one to hide her amazement about things, said, “Henry, your black eye’s gone.” Really, of all the things she could have observed right then, this seemed pretty ridiculous. But she was right. My reflection in the mirror showed no black eye. My face looked normal, as if I’d never been punched.

  “So our ghosts here—” Helen began, but I interrupted her to correct: “Subtle forms.”

  “Right. Our subtle forms are wearing the same clothes that we’re really wearing.”

  “Looks like,” I said.

  “Tomorrow, I’m going to bed in jeans then. I look like a church bell in this stupid nightgown.”

  “Helen,” I said, “did you see a guy just now—maybe out in the hall?”

  “No, nobody,” said Helen. “You did?”

  “Standing next to my bed,” I said.

  “That’s creepy. Are you sure, Henry?”

  “I think I’m sure,” I said. “But there’s lots of strange stuff going on right now.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He asked me a question,” I said, “whether I knew any violin players.”

  Helen eyed me quizzically, perhaps suspecting I was pulling her leg.

  “I know it’s odd,” I said.

  “Well, if it happens again, yell for me—I’m right down the hall, you know.”

  “I will,” I said, feeling a little foolish that this hadn’t occurred to me.

  Helen turned from the mirror. “Henry,” she said, “are you going to ask anyone to the dance?”

  “Erp?” I said.

  She looked at me carefully, like someone taking aim, and said, “What about Nicki?”

  Then I started talking really fast. I don’t know exactly what I said. Something like, “Whoa—what makes you think—no—Nicki? Who?”

  “You always seem like you’re trying to get up the guts,” said Helen. “Honestly, Henry, it makes you look constipated.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I replied, glancing at my sleeping form to see if my big ears were turning red.

  “But I’m sure you need to think about it,” said Helen, a little sarcastically.

  Just then, a sound came from downstairs. We both recognized it—our parents returning from work.

  “Hide,” I whispered.

  “But we’re invisible, right?” said Helen. “Come on, let’s look.” She led the way downstairs into the kitchen. The lights were on there, and the strange black hallways of upstairs gave way to what I expected to see: our nighttime kitchen, with all of its normal colors.

  But what I saw was not normal.

  “I can see both of them,” said Helen. And so could I—that is, both Moms and both Dads. Their physical bodies and their subtle forms were right inside one another. It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen, kind of like those nesting Russian dolls, but if the dolls were transparent.

  Dad opened the fridge to retrieve the stew I’d made, and reached out his pale skinny arms, in short sleeves. Just inside those arms was another set, also in short sleeves. As Dad stepped back from the fridge, his head appeared from behind the door, with his big ears sticking out. Inside his head was his other head, which was on fire. Flakes poured out, streaming into the kitchen and going right up through the ceiling to disappear, as if there were no ceiling at all.

  Dad’s fire was producing some white flakes, kind of like Carl’s fire had when I’d seen him the night before, but with more of a mix of other colors. As Dad placed the stew on the stove, he said to Mom, “I know he got it, Betty, because I saw him in the truck today.” His voice was angry.

  “Are you sure it was him?” said Mom. She was standing partly behind the kitchen cupboard door, getting out a couple of bowls. When she stepped back, I saw her, too. Her snowflakes were a little more colorful than Dad’s, overall.

  Amazingly, Helen was bored with this scene in about two seconds. “Let’s go outside,” she said.

  “Hold on,” I replied.

  “I can’t believe they gave it to him,” said Dad, staring into the stew as it heated on the stove. “What kind of experience does he have?”

  Mom was setting out napkins and silverware. “I don’t know, Thomas,” she replied. She was just letting him talk, hoping he’d wear out the topic on his own.

  Dad grabbed a wooden spoon and gave the stew a brisk turn. “Maybe it’s because of all that civil rights business,” he said. “The utility companies see the way the wind’s blowing. Immigrant rights, civil rights. It’s just a smokes
creen for taking jobs from qualified men.”

  “What are they talking about?” said Helen.

  “Nicki’s dad,” I replied. I’d put this together just barely, but I was pretty sure. “I think he must have gotten that job Dad was applying for, with Bell Telephone.”

  “But why is Dad talking about immigrants? Nicki’s parents were born here,” said Helen.

  This was true, but I knew Dad could be a little mixed up about stuff sometimes. Maybe because of what he saw in the war, or I don’t know what. I’d heard him talking with Larry Petersen, the son of Carroll Petersen, who owns Petersen’s Drugstore. Larry had fought in Korea too, and he and Dad talked about Korea and China and all of Asia like they were the same thing, and like everyone with brown skin was an immigrant. Nicki had pointed it out to me once.

  Dad brought the stew to the table and started spooning it into the bowls while Mom sliced an orange.

  “I bet it’s why they grounded us from seeing Nicki,” I said.

  Helen’s eyes went wide at this. Then she snorted angrily. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  Because I already knew something about walking through closed doors, I led the way, stepping through the solid wood, smelling the pine for a split second before arriving on the front porch.

  I turned to watch Helen come through. And as always she surprised me, charging out in a surprise attack I completely failed to anticipate. She shoved me with both hands and I fell, landing hard on my back on the concrete walkway. I was so startled I just lay there as she looked down at me, an expression of curiosity on her face. “You hurt?” she asked.

  I sat up. I should have been hurt. I’d gone down hard. But there was no arguing it—I was fine. The breath hadn’t even been knocked out of me.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Helen. “Now push me,” she said, holding out her arms.

  I didn’t give her a chance to retract the offer, but sprang forward instantly and gave her a tough shove. She landed on her back, as I had, laughing as she bounced. When she got up, she punched me on the nose.

  “Ow!” I cried. Were this my normal body, I’d have been gushing blood. But I felt nothing beyond surprise. “We’re . . . invulnerable?” I said. I’d forgotten we’d seen this in the book, but Helen probably hadn’t stopped thinking about it for a second.

  Now she paused and looked back at our house, her eyes going up to the second level. “I’m gonna try something,” she said, and she went back inside. I waited, mulling over how strange it was that we could pass through the front door of the house without touching it, but could feel the stairs beneath our feet as we climbed up and down them. Why didn’t we fall through the floor? I was sure there were similar mysteries lurking around every subtle corner.

  Helen appeared above, in her bedroom window. She waved down to me. When I saw what she intended, I held up both hands and shouted, “Don’t!”

  But she did. Not only did she jump, she dove—headfirst.

  Head on fire, she plummeted, and slammed face down into the driveway.

  I rushed toward her, but hadn’t taken two steps before she leaped to her feet, threw both arms in the air, and yelled, “You gotta try it, Henry!”

  “You’re . . . okay?” I said, hugging her with relief.

  “We are invincible,” said Helen. “Does that mean nothing to you?”

  Well, being invincible is one thing; watching your sister demonstrate it is another. We walked down the driveway to the road, and sat to wait for our friends.

  “Nicki is a great person,” said Helen, returning to our former topic. “So are her parents. Dad has no idea about anything.”

  “It’s the same with Alan,” I said. “I mean, I know as well as anyone that Carl’s a bully. And I’ve heard people say that Mr. Dunn’s a drunk . . . but why lump Alan in? It’s not fair.”

  Just then, we heard footsteps from up the road, in the darkness. I spotted a flame, bright in the night, with rainbows flowing up off the top.

  “It’s Nicki,” said Helen, waving.

  As her form clarified, my eyes crossed. I did not know, until that moment, what kind of clothes Nicki wore to bed. But here she was, barefoot in a red silk nightgown with embroidered cherry blossoms around the hem. She was too beautiful. I blushed, and looked at the ground.

  “Your heads are on fire!” said Nicki, amazed but also laughing as she pointed at the flames.

  “Don’t you ever look up?” said Helen, pointing above Nicki’s own head.

  She looked—and laughed even harder. She danced around a little bit, and Helen joined her, and their streams of rainbow snowflakes curled and blended.

  “This is unbelievable,” said Nicki, still dancing—and she knew how to dance. She had told me once that her parents made her take ballroom dancing classes. Nicki played tennis, too, and volleyball, and she was good at music. Her parents signed her up for a lot of stuff. They seemed to think she should do everything, and consequently she did. She took a few quick turns now and her nightgown twirled with her, and I thought that I would never take her to the Fall Formal. Why go to a dance with a guy who can’t dance?

  “Also, Nicki,” said Helen, “we are invulnerable.”

  “Someone else is coming,” I said.

  We fell silent as another torch appeared from up the road.

  “Alan,” I called out.

  He was dressed in a sleeveless yellow T-shirt and gray sweatpants cut off at the knee, a much more respectable, grown-up looking outfit than my boxer shorts and Saturn shirt.

  I glanced at Helen and saw her staring down at her own frilly white nightdress, frowning.

  Alan waved to us as he approached. “This is incredible!” he shouted.

  “We’ll see if we all remember the same stuff tomorrow,” said Nicki. “I mean, this could all just be a dream I’m having.”

  “Or me,” said Helen.

  “What’s up with our heads?” said Alan, gesturing toward the flames.

  “It was different last night, with Carl,” I said.

  “You guys,” said Alan, suddenly serious. “My dad still hasn’t seen him—nobody has.”

  “You mean he’s been missing for two days?” I said.

  “Dad reported it today,” said Alan. “The police came over, but I could tell they weren’t taking it seriously. They think he’s going to turn up in another day or two.” He paused. “But I think it is serious. Because . . . because of all of this.” He gestured around at the miracle we were sharing. “And because you talked to him last night, Henry. I think you were the last person.”

  “Did you tell the police about that?” said Nicki. “About what Henry saw?”

  “No,” said Alan. “I didn’t know this was real yet. And even if I did . . . I don’t know how I would have said it.”

  “Besides,” said Helen, “we can do something now, without waiting around for people to decide if we’re crazy.”

  “Henry,” said Alan, “what did you mean when you said things were different with Carl?”

  And with that single question, we all intuitively decided something, as firmly as if we’d taken a union vote. We were going to look into this ourselves. We’d see if there was anything to it.

  “He had flames like ours,” I said, “but the snowflakes were all white.” I looked up at our own flakes floating around, some soaking into our clothes, others skittering along the ground, or just disappearing up into the night sky. “There are some more,” I said, pointing toward my bedroom window, where a bunch of white flakes drifted.

  “Why from your room, Henry?” said Helen. “Could it be that guy you saw?”

  “What guy?” said Alan.

  I filled our friends in on the man who had been (and then not been) in my room. As we looked up at the white flakes in my window, my heart skittered. I didn’t really want to meet that man again. But we had to investigate.

  We ghosted back through our front door, into the kitchen. Mom and Dad were still at the table, eating their stew. They weren�
��t talking, just seemed lost in thought. It was amazing to see their subtle bodies nested so perfectly inside their regular bodies. Both forms ate at the same time, opening their mouths together and chewing.

  But this wasn’t what we had come to see.

  We continued up the stairs to the second floor.

  Just before the entrance to my room, we paused. Everyone looked at me, expecting me to take the lead, but I was too hesitant, and Helen peeked around the corner. “Nobody there,” she said. I breathed a sigh of relief, and we entered.

  Now that I’d been out for a while and wasn’t filling the room with my own flakes, most of the flakes there were white. It was clear where they were coming from.

  “The books,” said Alan. It was the Airman Crusader series, on my bedside table. Flames licked up from their covers, pouring out pure white flakes. I wondered if Airman Crusader Versus the Centipede King had been doing that while I was reading it—blowing gallons of white snowflakes into my face as I read. I wouldn’t have been able to see it, in the physical world, but I suppose I was sitting right in the middle of a snowstorm the whole time I was reading. That was more than strange . . . it was downright bizarre.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING at school, the four of us confirmed that we all remembered the same stuff. It wasn’t a dream. Incredible as it seemed, we’d walked out of our sleeping bodies and spent the evening together.

  In homeroom, McTavish read an announcement—if anyone had any information about Carl Dunn’s whereabouts, or about any suspicious persons, they were to contact the police. Furthermore, we should all be careful around town, especially after dark. It was scary to hear that in class. It made everything seem more real.

  I thought again about our little group’s decision not to tell anyone about the odd things we’d all experienced. I knew of two suspicious people now—the guy who’d been in my room last night and the violinist he’d told me to watch out for. Two characters who very likely had played a role in Carl’s disappearance, it seemed to me. But I still thought Helen was right—the four of us could start looking into this right away, rather than waiting for other people to decide if they believed us or not.