Keeper of Dreams (25 page)

“I’ve got to show Dad the worm’s mouth,” said Todd. “And you’re the one who knows exactly where it is.”

Jared didn’t move.

“I can’t believe you’d do this, Todd,” said Dad. His voice was full of grief. “Jared’s made so much progress, and now look.”

“Listen to me, both of you! Mom’s still alive on the other end of this thing! Stop trying to solve things, Dad, stop trying to make sense of it and just
watch
.”

Todd picked up Jared’s Lego thing, his representation of the worm, and took it to the closet and flung open the door.

He couldn’t see anything at all like that slice of air out in the backyard. He walked back and forth in front of the closet, trying to get the right angle. Then he went to the drapes and opened them, letting sunlight flood in. It didn’t help.

“Todd,” said Dad.

“Jared,” said Todd angrily, “if you don’t help me, Dad’s going to think we’re both crazy and we’ll
never
get Mom back. Now get off your butt and help me find it!”

Jared didn’t move.

Todd took the Lego thing and stepped right into the closet and began waving his hand around, thrusting here and there, trying to accidentally find the hole in the air.

“Stop it,” said Jared.

“What do you care whether I fall in or not?” said Todd. “Of course, if you guys aren’t helping, I’ll fall through just like Mom did, and I’ll be just as helpless as she is on the other side, and then you’ll lose us both, but at least Dad will know I’m not crazy!” Todd stopped and looked at his father. “Only now things will get really ugly, because the cops will want to know what happened to your son Todd, and they’ll begin to get curious about how
two
people from the same family both disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I watch
Law & Order
, Dad. You’ll be the prime suspect. And then they’ll think
you’re
crazy, unless
you
fall through the hole to prove it to them. And then Jared will be an orphan and there’ll be some cops who are thrown out of the police force because they insist that they saw this man—this mass-murder suspect—disappear into thin air in his son’s closet. Is that how you want this to go?”

Father was looking halfway between grief-stricken and terrified. But Jared had gotten off his bed and was padding across the floor, stepping
over Lego piles. He took the Lego structure out of Todd’s hands. Todd let him.

“Give me something,” said Jared.

“Like what?”

“Your shoe.”

“Why can’t you use something of your own for once?” said Todd.

“I can’t use my own stuff, because then it grabs hold of my hand and sucks me in.”

“You mean it knows who
owns
things?”

“When I throw your crap in it doesn’t grab my hand,” said Jared.

“Then let
me
throw
your
crap in.”

“Do you want Dad to see this or not?” demanded Jared.

Todd peeled his shoe off, but he didn’t give it to Jared. “Shoes are expensive, in case you didn’t know,” he said. He rolled his dirty white sock off. “Socks are cheap.”

“They also stink,” said Jared. “You’re such a pig, you never wash your clothes, you just wear them forever.” But he took the sock and ducked into the closet—ducked
under
something—and then shoved Todd out. “Both of you watch,” he said.

Then he held the sock out between his fingers and began swinging it back and forth like a floppy pendulum.

And then, on one of the outward swings, it stopped and didn’t come back. It just hung there in the air, Jared holding on to the top of the sock, and something else holding on to the toe end.

“Now it’s got it,” said Jared. “Watch close because it’s quick.”

Jared let go. The sock disappeared.

But Todd had indeed been watching closely, and even though it happened fast, he saw that the sock was sucked into something by the toe.

Jared was pressed up against the closet doorframe. He was still scared of the thing. Smart kid.

“Get out of the closet, Jared,” said Dad. His voice was soft. He was scared, too.

Jared sidled out.

Dad looked from Jared to Todd, back and forth. Then he settled on Todd. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because up till this morning I thought the kid was wacked out.”

“Thanks,” said Jared.

“You mean you never saw him do this?” said Dad.

“Did it look like I knew where the thing was?” asked Todd.

“I’ve put things in that closet hundreds of times,” said Dad.

“You have to come at it from the side,” said Jared. “And kind of slow.”

“And Mother did that?”

“She was trying to prove to me that there was nothing there. I told her how it worked, and so she was going to prove to me that it was just a nightmare. I begged her not to do it. I cried, I screamed at her, I threw things at her to get her to stop.”

“Jared,” said Dad, “that would just convince her that it was all the more important to prove it to you.”

“It got her,” said Jared. “I tried to pull her back but it got her whole arm and shoulder and her head so she couldn’t even talk to me and then it just grabbed the rest of her, all at once, and ripped her leg right out of my hands.” Jared was crying now. “I told you and told you but you didn’t believe me and Todd finally said to stop talking about it because you’d think I was crazy.”

Dad held Jared against him, patting his shoulder, letting him have his cry. He looked at Todd. “What happened this morning? What convinced you that it was real?”

So Todd told Dad all about Eggo the superdense scientist elf with duckfoot shoes, which sounded crazier the more he talked. He had to keep stopping and reminding Dad about the sock that disappeared, and half the time he was really reminding himself that this insane thing was real.

“I don’t know what to make of all this,” said Dad. “I don’t know what to do. We can’t tell this to the cops.”

“We
could
,” said Todd. “We could demonstrate it just like Jared did. I’ve got a lot of socks. But I don’t think it would help. They’d just take over, they’d throw us out of the house and bring in a bunch of scientists but then
we’d
never get Mom back. Cause I don’t care about studying this thing, I just want to go through it and get Mom.”

“Not a chance,” said Dad. “If anyone goes, I go.”

“Dad,” said Todd. “Think about it a minute. If
you
go, then there’s no
adult here in the house. Just me and Jared. Somebody’s going to notice when you don’t show up at work. They’ll come here and find out you’re gone.”

“I’ll come right back.”

“Did
Mom
come right back?” said Todd. “No, because time flows differently there, it’s only been a
week
for her, the guy said. So if you’re gone even a few hours, that’s days and weeks for us. So you’re just as stuck as Mom is, and Jared and I are in foster homes somewhere far away from here while the cops try to figure out who murdered you and Mom because there’s no chance they’ll listen to two crazy kids, right?”

“So there’s nothing we can do.”

“I can go,” said Todd.

“Not a chance,” said Dad. “What can you do that I
can’t
do?”

“You can cover up my absence,” said Todd. “You can say I’m visiting Aunt Heather and Uncle Peace on their hippie commune which doesn’t have a phone. You can say it’s therapy because I’m still so messed up about Mom’s death.”

“That still doesn’t get you
or
Mom back from . . . that other place.”

“Right,” said Todd. “But as long as you’re
here
, at the house, you can help us. Because what is Mom’s problem? She can’t find the mouth on the other side so she can come through it. Eggo knows where it is, he comes through it all the time. So maybe it’s in some place where she can’t go. Maybe it’s inside some building or in a public street where Eggo doesn’t want her to be seen. Or maybe he
wants
to keep her captive so he just won’t tell her.”

“And you think
you
can find it?” asked Dad.

“No,” said Todd. “I think you can move it and then show us where it’s at.”

“Move it?”

“Eggo moved the worm’s anus on his side, and it moved the mouth of it into Jared’s closet. So if you move the anus on
this
side, the mouth on
that
side should move, too.”

“Then neither you nor Mom nor this Eggo person will know where it is,” said Dad. “I can’t believe I’m talking about moving some interstellar worm’s ass.”

“It’s right out there by the garden hose,” said Todd. “You give the thing an enema.”

“What?” asked Dad.

“You stick the garden hose in and turn it on full blast.”

“What makes you think that will work? It only digests in one direction.”

“Eggo threatened to stuff my heart into the anus,” said Todd. “You must be able to jam things through that way.”

“Unless he was just making a stupid threat that wasn’t actually possible.”

“Then let’s test it,” said Todd.

A few minutes later, Dad was in his gym clothes instead of his pajamas and they stood in the back yard. Todd was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find the spot again, but by standing exactly where he had been when Eggo came through, he could see the very, very slight shimmering in the air. He made both Dad and Jared stand in that spot so they could find it. Then he went and got the garden hose and turned it on, just a trickle, and held the hose up so the water was running back down the green shaft of it.

He took it to the shimmering slice of air and tried to push it through. But it was just like waving it around in the air. It met no resistance, it found no aperture. He was just watering the lawn.

Then he remembered that Jared said you had to approach it from exactly the right angle. He tried to remember which direction Eggo’s naked body had come through, and moved so he was standing at exactly the same angle from the hole. Then, very slowly, he extended the hose, holding it just behind the metal end where the water came out.

He felt just a little resistance, just
there
, but when he pushed harder, the hose slid aside and it was just air again.

Exact angle of approach. How much was Eggo’s body tilted when it came through?

Todd brought his hand down and pushed the hose upward toward the spot where he had met resistance before. Now it felt solid. Real resistance. “I’m there,” he said.

He tried to push the hose in. It went a little way, and to his surprise the water started squirting back at him, like when somebody covers the end of the hose with his thumb.

“Yow!” shouted Jared. “Cool!”

“You got it,” said Dad.

“I can’t push it through,” said Todd. “I’m not strong enough.”

“Or it only goes one way,” said Jared.

“Help me!” Todd said to Dad.

A moment later, Dad was beside him, gripping Todd’s hands over the hose. With his strength added on—or maybe entirely because of his strength, because Todd was certainly no strongman—the end of the hose suddenly moved and . . . disappeared.

So did the water. Nothing trickled back down the hose. The water was flowing somewhere else.

“Enema,” said Jared. “Cool.”

Dad let go.

“No!” said Todd. “We’ve got to move it.”

“Where?” said Dad. “How?”

“We’ve got the hose jammed into it, don’t we? Let’s use it like a handle and shove it somewhere else.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know,” said Todd. “I don’t think it matters. Eggo couldn’t predict where it would move on
our
side, he could only move it where he wanted on
his
side. So let’s move it where we want it and let the other side go wherever it goes.”

“Maybe thousands of miles.”

“What else can we do?” said Todd. “Wherever it is on that side, Dad, Mom hasn’t been able to get to it. So we have to move it, and then when I get there, Mom and I have to find it.”

“But how?” asked Dad. “If you and Mom are . . . misty or whatever . . .”

“Dad,” said Todd. “It’s probably going to be pretty easy to find. There’s water coming out of it.”

“Or fog,” said Dad. “If things are mistier there.”

“Water, fog—
something’s
coming out of it right now. So let’s move the thing, if we can.”

It was only hard because the hose was so flexible. Twice when they tried to move the thing sideways, the hose slipped out, squirting them for a moment before it settled back to being just a trickle. Finally Dad had the idea of using the handle of the rake from the tool shed, and that worked.
He shoved it in beside the hose. It was rigid, and they were able to move the thing ten yards across the yard to the shed. The hose slid out as they went, spurting water for a moment when it did.

The shed door was still open, so they easily slid the worm’s anus inside.

“Don’t pull the rake out yet,” said Dad. “Hold it in place.”

He ran to the house and came back out with the digital camera. He took pictures of the hose from several angles. “I don’t want to run the risk of not being able to get the hose back into it.”