I Am Number Four (23 page)

Mr. Harris sits at his desk when I enter the office. He is smiling in a way that terrifies me, the same prideful smile that he had on the day he pulled Mark from class to do the interview.

“Sit down,” he says. I sit. “So, is it true?” he asks. He glances at his computer screen, then he looks back at me.

“Is what true?”

On his desk there is an envelope with my name handwritten in black ink. He sees me looking at it.

“Oh yes, this was faxed to you about half an hour ago.”

He picks the envelope up and tosses it to me. I catch it.

“What is it?” I ask.

“No idea. My secretary sealed it in the envelope as soon as it arrived.”

Several things happen at once. I open the envelope and remove its contents. Two sheets of paper. The top is a cover page with my name on it and “CONFIDENTIAL” written in large black letters. I shuffle it behind the second sheet. A single sentence written in all capitals. No name. Just four black words on a white canvas.

“So, Mr. Smith, is it true? Did you run into that burning house to save Sarah Hart and those dogs?” Mr. Harris asks. Blood rushes to my face. I look up. He turns his computer monitor towards me so that I can read the screen. It’s the blog affiliated with the
Paradise Gazette
. I don’t need to look at the name of the author to know who has written it. The title is more than enough.

T
HE
J
AMES
H
OUSE
F
IRE
: T
HE
U
NTOLD
S
TORY

My breath catches in my throat. My heart races. The world stops, or at least it seems to. I feel dead inside. I look back down at the sheet of paper I’m holding. White paper, smooth in my fingertips. It reads:

ARE YOU NUMBER 4?

Both sheets fall from my hands, drift away, and float to the floor, where they lie motionless.
I don’t understand,
I think.
How can this be?

“So is it?” Mr. Harris asks.

My mouth drops open. Mr. Harris is smiling, proud, happy. But it’s not him that I see. It’s what’s behind him, seen through the windows of his office. A blur of red coming around the corner, moving faster than what is normal, than what is safe. The squeal of tires as it zips into the lot. The pickup truck throwing gravel as it makes a second turn. Henri leaning over the wheel like some crazed maniac. He hits the brakes so forcefully that his whole body jerks and the truck comes screeching to a stop.

I close my eyes.

I place my head in my hands.

Through the window I hear the truck door open. I hear it close.

Henri will be in this office within the minute.

“ARE YOU OKAY, MR. SMITH?” THE PRINCIPAL
asks. I look up at him. He attempts his best look of concern, a look that lasts only a second before the toothy grin returns to his face.

“No, Mr. Harris,” I say. “I’m not okay.”

I pick the sheet up off the floor. I read it again. Where did it come from? Are they merely screwing with us now? There is no phone number or address, no name. Nothing but four words and a question mark. I look up and out the window. Henri’s truck is parked, fumes rising from the exhaust. In and out as quickly as he can. I look back at the computer screen. The article was posted at 11:59 a.m., almost two hours ago. I’m amazed it took Henri this long to arrive. A sense of vertigo seeps in. I feel myself sway.

“Do you need the nurse?” Mr. Harris asks.

The nurse,
I think.
No, I don’t need the nurse.
The
nurse’s station is the room beside the home economics kitchen.
What I need, Mr. Harris, is to go back there, fifteen minutes ago, before the hall monitor arrived.
Sarah must have the pudding on the stove by now. I wonder if it’s boiling yet. Is she looking towards the door, waiting for me to return?

The faint echo of the school doors slamming shut reaches the principal’s office. Fifteen seconds until Henri is here. Then to his truck. Then home. Then where? To Maine? Missouri? Canada? A different school, a new beginning, another new name.

I haven’t slept in almost thirty hours and only now do I feel the exhaustion. But then something else enters with it, and in that split second between instinct and action, the reality that I’m going away forever without the chance to say good-bye is suddenly too much to bear. My eyes narrow, my face twists in agony, and—without thinking, without truly knowing what it is that I’m doing—I lunge over Mr. Harris’s desk and crash through the plate-glass window, which shatters into a million little pieces behind me. A scream of shock follows.

My feet land in the outside grass. I turn right and run across the schoolyard, the classrooms passing in a blur to my right, across the lot and into the woods that lie beyond the baseball field. There are cuts on my forehead and left elbow from the glass. My lungs are burning. The hell with the pain. I keep going, the sheet
of paper still in my right hand. I shove it into my pocket. Why would the Mogadorians send a fax? Wouldn’t they just show up? That is their main advantage, to arrive unexpectedly, without warning. The benefit of surprise.

I take a hard left in the middle of the woods, weaving in and out of the forest’s density until it ends and a field begins. Cows chewing cud watch with blank eyes as I streak past. I beat Henri to the house. Bernie Kosar is nowhere to be seen. I burst through the door and stop dead in my tracks. My breath catches in my throat. At the kitchen table, in front of Henri’s open laptop, sits a person I immediately think is one of them. They’ve beat me here, have worked it out so that I am alone, without Henri. The person turns around and I clench my hands into fists and am ready to fight.

But it’s Mark James.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s going on,” he says, a look of fright evident in his eyes. “Who the hell
are
you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look,” he says, pointing to the computer screen.

I walk to him, but I don’t look at the screen, my eyes instead focusing on the white sheet of paper sitting beside the computer. It’s an exact replica of the sheet in my pocket except for the paper that it’s printed on, which is thicker than the fax. And then I notice something else. At the bottom of Henri’s, in very small
handwriting, is a phone number. Surely they can’t expect us to call? “Yes, it’s me, Number Four. I am here waiting for you. We’ve been running for ten years, but please, come kill us now; we won’t put up a fight.” It makes no sense at all.

“Is this yours?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “But it was delivered by UPS at the same time that I got here. Your dad read it as I showed him the video, and then he sprinted out of the house.”

“What video?” I ask.

“Watch,” he says.

I look at the computer and see that he’s pulled up YouTube. He presses the play button. It’s a grainy video, of poor quality as though it has been shot on somebody’s cell phone. I recognize his house immediately, the front of which is in flames. The camera is shaky, but through it can be heard the dogs bark and the filtered gasps throughout the crowd. Then the person begins walking away from the crowd, to the side of the house, and eventually to the back. The camera zooms in to the rear window where the bark is coming from. The bark stops and I close my eyes because I know what is coming. About twenty seconds pass, and in the moment that I fly through the window with Sarah in one arm and the dog in the other, Mark hits the pause button on the video. The camera is zoomed in, and our faces are unmistakable.

“Who are you?” Mark asks.

I ignore his question, instead ask one of my own: “Who took this?”

“I have no idea,” he answers.

The gravel pops beneath the truck tires in the front of the house as Henri pulls in. I stand straight and my first instinct is to run, get out of the house and get back to the school, where I know Sarah will be staying late to develop photos—until her driver’s test at four thirty. Her face is just as obvious as mine is in that video, which puts her in as much danger as me. But something keeps me from fleeing, and I instead move around to the other side of the table and wait. The truck door slams shut. Henri walks into the house five seconds later, Bernie Kosar dashing in ahead of him.

“You lied to me,” he says in the doorway, his face set hard, the muscles in his jaw flexed.

“I lie to everybody,” I say. “I learned that from you.”

“We don’t lie to each other!” he screams.

Our eyes stay locked.

“What’s going on?” Mark asks.

“I’m not leaving without finding Sarah,” I say. “She’s in danger, Henri!”

He shakes his head at me. “Now isn’t the time for sentimentality, John. Do you not see this?” he says, and walks across the room and lifts the sheet of paper and begins waving it at me. “Where the hell do you think this came from?”

“What in the hell is going on?” Mark nearly bellows.

I ignore the sheet and Mark, and keep my eyes on Henri’s. “Yes, I’ve seen it, and that’s why I need to get back to the school. They’ll see her and go after her.”

Henri starts towards me. After his second step I lift my hand and stop him where he stands, ten or so feet away. He tries to keep walking but I hold him in place.

“We need to get out of here, John,” he says, a hurt, almost pleading tone in his voice.

While holding him at a distance, I begin walking backwards towards my bedroom. He stops trying to walk. He says nothing, standing there watching me with pain in his eyes, a look that makes me feel worse than I’ve ever felt before. I have to look away. When I get to my doorway our eyes meet again. His shoulders are slumped, arms at his sides as though he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He just stares at me, looking as though he may cry.

“I’m sorry,” I say, giving myself enough of a head start to get away, and turn and sprint across my bedroom, grab from my drawer a knife I used to scale fish when we still lived in Florida, and jump out the window and race into the woods. Bernie Kosar’s bark follows, nothing else. I run for a mile and stop in the big clearing where Sarah and I made snow angels. Our clearing, she had called it. The clearing in which we would have our summer picnics. A pain in my chest at the thought
that I won’t be here for summer, a pain so great that I bend over and grit my teeth. If only I could call her and warn her to get out of the school. My phone, along with everything else I took to school, is in my locker. I’ll get her out of harm’s way and then I’ll get back to Henri and we’ll leave.

I turn and run towards school, run as hard as my lungs will permit me. I reach the school just as the buses have begun pulling out of the lot. I watch them from the border of the woods. At the front of the school Hobbs is standing outside the front window measuring a large sheet of plywood to cover the window I broke. I slow my breathing, try my best to clear my mind. I watch the cars trickle out until there are only a few left. Hobbs covers the hole, disappears into the school. I wonder if he has been warned about me, if he has been instructed to call the police if he sees me. I look at my watch. Though it is only 3:30, the darkness seems to have come on faster than normal, a darkness steeped in density, a darkness that is heavy, consuming. The lights in the lot have come on, but even they seem dulled and stunted.

I leave the woods and walk across the baseball field and into the lot. Ten or so cars stand alone. The door to the school is already locked. I grab hold of it and close my eyes and focus and the lock clicks. I walk inside, and I don’t see anyone. Only half of the hallway lights are on. The air is still and quiet. Somewhere I
hear the floor polisher running. I turn into the lobby and the door to the photography darkroom comes into view. Sarah. She was going to develop some pictures today before her test. I pass by my locker and open it. My phone isn’t there; the locker is completely empty. Somebody, hopefully Henri, has it. By the time I reach the darkroom I haven’t seen a single person. Where are the athletes, the members of the band, the teachers who often stay late to grade papers or do whatever it is they do? A bad feeling creeps into my bones, and I’m terrified that something awful has already happened to Sarah. I press my ear against the darkroom door to listen, but hear nothing aside from the drone of the floor polisher coming from far down the hallway. I take a deep breath and try the door. It’s locked. I press my ear to it again and gently knock. There’s no answer, but I hear a slight rustling on the other side. I take a deep breath, tense myself to what I might find inside, and unlock the door.

The room is pitch-black. I turn on my lights and sweep my hands one way, then the other. I see nothing and think the room is empty, but in the corner, I see a very slight movement. I crouch down to look, and beneath the counter, trying to remain unseen, is Sarah. I dim my lights so that she can see it’s me. From the shadows, she looks up and smiles, and breathes a sigh of relief.

“They’re here, aren’t they?”

“If they aren’t yet, they will be soon.”

I help her up from off the floor and she wraps her arms around me and squeezes me so tightly that I don’t think she intends to ever let go.

“I came in here right after eighth period, and as soon as school ended, all these weird noises started coming from the halls. And it got really dark, so I locked myself in here and stayed beneath the counter, too scared to move. I just knew something was wrong, especially after I heard about you jumping through the window and you weren’t answering your phone.”

“That was smart, but now we have to get out of here, and fast.”

We leave the room, holding hands. The hallway lights flicker off, the whole school engulfed in darkness, even though dusk is still an hour or so away. After about ten seconds, they come back on.

“What’s happening?” Sarah whispers.

“I don’t know.”

We move down the hallway as quietly as we can, and any noise we do make seems deadened, muffled. The quickest way out is the back door that opens onto the teachers’ lot, and as we head that way, the sound of the floor polisher grows. I assume that we’ll run into Hobbs. I assume he knows that I’m the one who broke the window. Will he fend me off with a broomstick and call the police? I guess at this point it doesn’t matter.

When we reach the back hallway the lights turn off again. We stop and wait for them to come back on, but they don’t. The floor polisher continues, a steady hum. I can’t see it, but it is only twenty or so feet away in the impenetrable darkness. I find it odd that the machine keeps running, that Hobbs keeps polishing in the dark. I turn on my lights, and Sarah lets go of my hand and stands behind me with her hands on my hips. I find the plug in the wall first, then the cord, then the machine itself. It stands in one place, bumping against the wall, unmanned, running itself. Panic sweeps through me, with fear close behind. Sarah and I have to get out of the school.

I rip the cord from the outlet and the polisher stops, replaced by the soft hum of silence. I turn my lights off. Somewhere far down the hall a door slowly creaks open. I crouch down, my back against the wall, Sarah holding tightly to my arm. Both of us are too scared to say a word. Instinct caused me to pull the cord to stop the polisher, and I have the urge to plug it back in, but I know it’ll give us away if they’re here. I close my eyes and strain to listen. The creaking door stops. A soft wind seems to materialize from nowhere. Surely there isn’t a window open. I think that maybe the wind is entering from the window I broke. Then the door slams shut and glass breaks and shatters on the floor.

Sarah screams. Something sweeps by us but I don’t see what it is and I don’t care to find out. I pull Sarah by the hand and sprint down the hall. I shoulder the door and rush out into the parking lot. Sarah gasps and both of us stop dead in our tracks. My breath catches in my throat and chills shoot up my spine. The lights are still on but dimmed and looking ghastly in the heavy dark. Beneath the nearest light we both see it, trench coat swaying in the breeze, hat pulled low so that I can’t see its eyes. It lifts his head and grins at me.

Sarah’s grip tightens on my hand. We both take one step backwards and trip in our rush to get away. We move the rest of the way back in a crab walk until we hit the door.

“Come on,” I yell as I rush to my feet. Sarah stands. I try the latch but the door automatically locked behind us.

“Shit!” I yell.

I see another in the corner of my eye, standing still at first. I watch as it takes its first step towards me. There is another one behind it. The Mogadorians. All these years and they are finally here. I try to focus but my hands are shaking too badly to open the door. I feel them bearing down, closing in. Sarah presses close to me and I can feel her trembling.