Jane and the Raven King (3 page)

T
hunder crashed, and they all jumped. Outside, it was suddenly much darker. Now, as Jane watched out the living room window, a wall of fast-moving blackness approached from across the street until hard rain lashed the windows. The wind chimes on the back porch rattled and clanged, and lightning flickered through the storm clouds. Jane’s father had called thunder the sound of angels bowling, and as it smashed again, she wondered if one of them had hit a strike.

“Cool,” Michael said.

“Now where did all that come from?” Jane’s mother said.

“The TV,” Grandma Diana said. “Let’s turn it on.”

Michael looked pleased. “I thought you said we weren’t supposed to watch—”

“Quiet, Michael,” Grandma Diana snapped. Jane’s mother turned on the television. A red crawl at the top of the screen told them that there was a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch.

“Change it to cartoons,” Michael said.

Jane’s father murmured, “We should get to the basement.”

Grandma Diana sighed, and Michael gave Jane a funny look. Their mother patted their father’s hand. “We don’t have a basement, dear,” she said. “Remember?”

Hypnotized by the television, he nodded. “Oh. I knew that, didn’t I?”

“Right,” Grandma Diana said. “Switch it off please.”

Jane’s mother held the remote control, but she didn’t budge. “Just one minute.”

They were watching a fast-food commercial. Wind and rain thrashed the windows, and thunder grumbled again.

“Give me the remote,” Grandma Diana said.

Jane’s mother moved away, as if she were going to sit on it. “Not yet…”

“Mom,” Jane said. “What’s the matter? It’s just a commercial.”

“I’m sorry,” her mother said, frowning as if she were struggling to look away from the screen. “I can’t turn it off right now.”

“That’s right,” Jane’s father said. “Leave it on.”

“Let’s watch cartoons,” Michael said again. “Mom, can you change the channel at least?”

Grandma Diana stood and extended her hand, as if Jane’s mother were a dog that had stolen her shoe. “Give it to me.”

“I can’t,” Jane’s mother said.

Jane said, “Mom…” But when she reached out, her mother jerked away to protect the remote.

“
Now
,” Grandma Diana said.

“Mom…”

“Do not touch her, Jane.”

“No,” Jane’s mother said, but she still hadn’t looked up from the TV screen.

Michael said, “I don’t understand—”

Grandma Diana clapped her hands and shouted, “
Aven saat!
” At that, lightning struck a power line across the street in a burst of glittery sparks and a
crack
like an aluminum bat smacking a metal trash can. The lights went out, and the TV blipped to black.

Michael jumped up and said, “Grandma, how did you
do
that?”

Grandma Diana ignored him, watching Jane’s mother, who blinked and finally looked up. “I’m sorry,” Jane’s mother said. “Did you say something?”

“It’s fine, dear,” Grandma Diana said and took the remote. She crouched behind the entertainment center and unplugged the power cords.

“We lost power,” Jane’s father said. “I’d better check the circuit breakers and get flashlights.” He paused as if he’d forgotten something, then asked Grandma Diana, “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, everything’s fine.” Grandma Diana sat with Jane’s mother. “Jane, take your brother and find batteries.”

Jane and Michael went into the kitchen, and Michael said, “Did you
see
that?”

“Lightning struck the power line.”

“She
made
it hit the power line,” he said.

“Maybe,” Jane said.

“What do you mean
maybe?
That was so cool. I want to know how she did it.”

Jane found three boxes of unopened batteries in the drawer with the rubber bands and scissors.

“Something’s wrong with Mom and Dad,” she said.

“What?”

“I don’t know, but you saw how they were acting.”

Michael started to answer, but then his faced flushed. “I can’t play on my computer now that the power’s out, can I?”

“Michael, I think this is important.”

“I was supposed to get this new game tonight.” He kicked the drawer shut. “This is so annoying.”

She led him back into the living room. “Come on.”

“There we are,” Grandma Diana said. “Batteries, as requested.”

“All right, hand them here,” Jane’s father said, organizing flashlights and lamps on the carpet. “Let’s find out how many of these work.”

“Should we call the restaurant?” Jane’s mother asked. “They may not deliver in this weather.”

Rain raked the windows, and her father grinned. “Tonight, they’ll earn their tip.”

They’re back,
Jane thought.
My parents are back to normal. It was nothing; they were just distracted.
Grandma Diana met her stare with a knowing expression.

The doorbell chimed.

“
Finally!
” Michael said.

The food had arrived.

A
fter a terrific dinner, Michael asked what they were going to do with the power still out. Grandma Diana pulled a deck of cards from her purse.

“Pinochle,” she said.

“Don’t you think they’re a little young?” Jane’s mother asked.

“Nonsense,” Grandma Diana said. “I am certain Michael’s favorite game is far more complicated.” She nodded to him. “Isn’t that true—what is your favorite game?”

“On the computer?” he asked.

“On anything.”

“Well, there’s this one game I was supposed to play tonight, but now I’m not going to be able to…”

Their father frowned. “And where were you going to get it?”

“On my
computer
,” Michael said.

“But who was going to buy it for you?”

“You don’t have to
buy it,
” Michael said. “He was going to give it to me for free.”

Grandma Diana set down the cards. “Who?”

Michael hesitated, suddenly uncomfortable with everyone watching him. “No one.”

“I told you about talking to people on the Internet,” their father
said. “How many times have I said that?”

“Not on
the Internet
,” Michael said.

“Michael,” Grandma Diana said calmly. “No one is angry with you. We are only curious about your new game.”

“I can’t even describe it,” Michael said, his face lighting up again. Rain pounded and thrashed outside. “It looked so cool, like so much fun.”

“A man was going to give this game to you?” their mother asked.

“Not a man,” Michael said. “A boy—one of our neighbors.”

Their parents relaxed, but Grandma Diana asked, “What is the boy’s name?”

“Nolan.”

Her face hardened, and Jane noticed one of Grandma Diana’s fists squeezing the card box.

“So pinochle it is,” their father said. “I’m a little rusty. Let’s go over the rules.”

Grandma Diana nodded, the cold tension gone again, and she said, “Everyone pay attention. Pinochle is a game with a long tradition of sore losers. We do not want any in this house, so we will be perfectly clear on the rules before we begin. Now then…”

They played five games. Their mother won the first two, then Michael won, then Jane, and, finally, their father came out ahead in the last game.

“I thought I had lost my touch,” he said, as Grandma Diana put the cards away. “But I guess I just needed to warm up.”

Grandma Diana stood. “Well played. And it is late. I had better be getting back to my hotel.”

“In this?” Jane’s mother said. “It’s terrible outside. You’re not driving in this weather.”

They all went to the window to watch the thunderstorm. Lightning streaked in the blackness overhead, followed by a low wave of thunder.

“I am sure it will be fine,” Grandma Diana said. “I have driven in worse.”

“I won’t have you out in this storm, Mother.”

Before Grandma Diana could object again, the town’s air-raid sirens came on—meaning tornadoes had been spotted—and she smiled, surrendering to her daughter’s better judgment. They all got ready for bed. Jane fed Iz and was about to brush her teeth when Grandma Diana knocked and came into her bedroom.

“I like your friend here,” Grandma Diana said. “I’ve always had a soft spot for rabbits, but I like lizards too. His name’s Iz, isn’t it? A good name—it suits him.”

“Thank you,” Jane said. Kids at school and Michael always mocked her iguana’s name. She’d gotten it from the name of a Hawaiian musician her father liked.

“Before I forget,” Grandma Diana said, “I have something for you.” She took a small jewelry box from her purse. “A present.”

“Thank you,” Jane said again.

“It isn’t much. Open it.”

Jane popped off the lid. Wedged into a bed of white foam was a purple stone with blue sparkles at its center. Although it was smooth like a large marble, it wasn’t perfectly round.

“It is a good luck stone,” Grandma Diana said. “Keep it with you.” Jane took it out and rolled it in her palm. It was heavier than it looked. She didn’t know how to respond. It was just a
rock
, after all—but there was something about the glitter at its core…

“Thank you,” Jane said.

“You are disappointed?”

“No,” Jane said. “It’s pretty, I like it—thank you, Grandma.”

“It was given to me when I was your age. Your mother never had any use for it, but you… Keep it with you, and only break it if you absolutely must.” She kissed Jane’s forehead. “Good night, dear. Get some sleep.”

“Good night, Grandma.”

Grandma Diana turned to go, and there was Michael, watching from the hall.

“You are as quiet as a mouse, Michael,” Grandma Diana said as she walked out. “Sleep well.”

“Good night,” he said. Then, he came into Jane’s room. “What’d she give you?” Jane showed him the stone, and he said, “What is it?”

“Just a rock,” she said. “I think.”

“I hope the power comes on. Are you sleepy?”

“Yes, it’s late.”

“Well, I’m not,” he said and went back into the hall. “But this stupid storm…”

Jane put on her pajamas and arranged the stone on her dresser. She brushed her teeth, said good night to her parents, and then got
into bed. For some reason, she found herself staring at Grandma Diana’s stone.
Just a rock,
she told herself. But then, without thinking, she grabbed the stone and slipped it under her pillow. She was afraid and didn’t know why. She listened to the rain and closed her eyes. That was funny, wasn’t it?
Sleeping with a rock under my pillow,
Jane thought.
Funny.

12:00.

Jane’s alarm clock was blinking red.

12:00.

She rolled over, pulled the covers up, shivering in a wet chill.

Wet…?
She sat up.

12:00. 12:00.

The window was open. Rain spattered the wall, and her schoolbooks, the magazines on her desk—they were all getting soaked. She got up, shut the window, and turned the lock. I closed the window, Jane thought. This afternoon, I locked it.

Maybe it was broken. She watched the dark bedroom and listened to the wind suck and shake outside. Her door was open. Jane always shut her bedroom door at night in case Iz snuck out of his tank. Iz…the iguana was standing on his hind legs facing the open bedroom door and dark hallway. Jane’s pulse quickened. She told herself to calm down.
The window lock is broken,
she thought.
And the wind blew open the door.
Except that the window would need to be
pushed
—it couldn’t fall up and open on its own. Had someone opened it?
Michael,
she thought,
it must be Michael. This is some kind of joke—he’s trying to scare me.

Jane went to her bedroom door, started to close it, and stopped. Michael’s door was closed, but she could see a faint light under the bottom. Now that the power was back on, he had woken up to play computer games or something.
So why did he open my window?
she wondered.
It doesn’t matter. Shut the door, and go back to sleep.

Iz scratched the lid of his tank, and Jane pressed her door closed. It creaked. She caught it and held it open. Had she just heard a woman’s voice?

Jane held her breath and listened to her heartbeat, loud in both ears. Iz was scratching harder now.
No, I’m tired,
she thought.
I didn’t—
But there it was again: the murmur of a woman’s voice. Jane stepped into the hall and crept toward the kitchen doorway that would give her a view into the living room.
This is stupid,
she told herself.
Someone is probably watching TV, that’s all.
Breathing faster, Jane reached the doorway. Past the kitchen, she could see Grandma Diana seated upright on the living room couch, hands folded in her lap. She was whispering, and as Jane watched, she noticed a white-blue glare around her grandmother. It was as if Grandma Diana were backlit by a soft lamp so she appeared to glow.

“Grandma?” Jane said.

Grandma Diana stopped speaking and cocked her head toward the kitchen. Something moved in the darkness near the TV. “Grandma?” Jane said again.

“Go back to your room, Jane,” Grandma Diana said. “Shut the door.”

“Are you all right?”

“I am fine. Please go back to your room, dear.”

Jane hesitated. “Grandma…”

A stalk-thin shadow moved into the kitchen with halting steps, as if on stilts. The stickman was black and huge, and as it approached her, Jane stumbled backward into the wall.

“Grandma!”

“You will not touch her!” Grandma Diana shouted, and a bulb of white-blue light flashed between Jane and the stickman. In the sudden light, the kitchen and living room were illuminated, and Jane saw many more—dozens—of shadow stickmen. They were hugging the walls like human insects, their long limbs ponderous, their faceless heads dented with hollow eyes. The stickmen moaned like the ocean.

Grandma Diana began to whisper again—it wasn’t English, but it drew the shadows toward her, away from Jane. Jane was trembling. Her legs wouldn’t work, and she gasped, fighting to breathe.

“Your room, Jane,” Grandma Diana said.

Michael’s door opened, and as yellow light spilled into the hall, Jane heard the
click-clack-click
of his computer keys. A boy stepped out. Behind the boy, Michael sat with his back to Jane, frantically playing a computer game.

“Can I get you anything?” the boy asked Jane as he shut Michael’s door.

She smelled finger paint and glue, and she shuddered as if she’d been pushed and was too ashamed of her own helplessness to
respond. That smell:
A memory from my childhood,
Jane thought.
Children laughed at me, a teacher ridiculed me, and when I broke down, I buried my face in those smells.
The odor brought it all back now. And just as quickly, it was gone.

“No?” the boy said. “Excuse me then.”

He stepped past Jane into the kitchen, and she lost sight of him. Then she heard the rustling of heavy wings and glimpsed a shadow on the ceiling above Grandma Diana.

“Child,” the bird-shadow said. “I will ask you once: where is it?”

Grandma Diana looked up, the light around her stronger now. “None of them know. I have told no one.”

A low laugh came, and although Jane couldn’t see the stickmen, she heard them moan again.

“
Where
?”

Grandma Diana stood, raised one arm, and said, “When I break you, your evil will die and never return. You will be forgotten.”

“Forgotten?” the bird-shadow said, and Jane heard wings flap like the branches of a great tree. “You are afraid.”

Grandma Diana’s light dilated, then crackled into glowing barbs that caught the stickmen as if they were metal rods. She raised her fist, shouting in another language—“
Ignatio vate!
”—as fire burst from her knuckles and flowed into the great black bird over her. The bird screamed and flailed, the stickmen shrank, and Grandma Diana yelled, “Run, Jane!” before the bird shook away the flames and descended on her. Grandma Diana crumpled to the floor. Her light went out.

Jane ran into the living room. “Grandma!” Grandma Diana
wasn’t breathing. Her skin was shrinking like wet paper. There were big blue marbles where her eyes should have been, and her hair wasn’t real—it was fake hair. The skin wasn’t skin anymore—it was plastic. Jane was holding a giant toy: a mannequin of her grandmother. A hand stroked Jane’s chin, and she looked up. The boy from Michael’s room smiled at her.

“Where is it?” he said. “She must have told you. I only want to see it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jane said.

The boy was losing his patience, and Jane glimpsed a rotten, hooked beak and empty, animal eyes. Then he was just a boy with none of those other things. “The name of the world,” he said. “What did she do with it?”

“What did you do to my grandmother?” Jane said. “Where is she?”

“You don’t have a grandmother,” he said. “You never did. She is that dead. Now, where is it?”

Jane smelled mold, but she stepped closer, right in his face.
He’s just a boy,
she told herself. Anything else was impossible. “Where is my grandmother?”

“You will answer me—”

Jane slapped him. The room streaked and polarized—black to white, white to black—and when Jane blinked, the boy had staggered backward, blood on his lip. For a long second, he stared at her, shocked and terrified. Then, the air sucked, and he wasn’t a boy anymore—he was a man in a bloody cape with huge wings and then a black bird as giant as the wall. Jane stumbled and ran.

The bird screamed, “Kill her!”

She threw open Michael’s bedroom door. “Michael, come on!”

He didn’t look away from his computer. “Hold on…”

She yanked him away from the screen. “We have to go.”

“What is your problem—?” He saw the stickmen lumbering closer in the kitchen and ran with Jane into her bedroom.

The top of the iguana tank had fallen. Iz was gone.

“What
are
those things?” Michael said.

Jane shoved open her bedroom window, then glanced back as stickmen came into the hall. “I don’t know.” It was still raining outside. “But we have to go.”

“What about Mom and Dad?”

“They’ll be fine,” Jane said, and she slipped one leg outside.

Michael was pale, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t—”

A voice outside said, “This way.”

The blind man and his dog waited in matching yellow raincoats. The man caught Jane’s wrist and helped her down. “Quickly!” he said. “Quickly now! Finn, watch the front lawn.”

Michael hesitated at the open window as a stickman ambled into the bedroom behind him.

“Hurry!” the blind man said. “Out, out!”

Michael said, “Jane…”

“It’s all right,” Jane said. “Give me your hand.”

The stickman neared Michael, ten feet away. Now eight feet. Six.

“Michael, come on!” she shouted.

“That man with you is crazy,” Michael said.

Four feet from Michael, the stickman stretched one formless hand toward his shoulder.

“
Now
Michael!”

“I—” He saw the stickman out of the corner of his eye and jerked backward, banging his head on the window as he somersaulted out. Jane and the blind man caught him. Shaking in the wet grass, Michael said, “Now what are we supposed to—?”

The stickman slipped one arm out the window. Its shadow-head and torso followed, then a leg, and the blind man said, “Run!”