The Secret Sea (14 page)

And as his vision cleared, for the first time in his memory, he saw his brother.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

Tommy looked exactly like Zak, which was no surprise. When he smiled, wisps of smoke peeled away from his lips, as if the mere motion of smiling had cut loose some part of him.

“Zak,” he said, and spread his arms wide. More streamers of smoke peeled from him, and Zak realized that if he squinted, he could barely make out the trees of the park
through
his brother.

Zak had lunged forward, but Moira and Khalid held him back. “Dude,” Khalid said, “we don't know what's going on.”

“I'm not going to hurt you.
Any
of you,” Tommy said. “I need your help. We both do.”

“Both?”

“How do we get home?” Moira said suddenly.

Zak wrestled himself free of them and approached Tommy. The air grew colder and drier near his brother, and he knew even before he extended a hand that he would feel nothing when he tried to touch him. Sure enough, his hand went through, as though sweeping aside mist from dry ice. “Tommy, what's going on?”

The boy seemed to take a breath. Like a hole blown through smoke by a fan, a section of his chest faded from view for a moment before filling back in. “I'm not sure how long I can sustain this projection. It's difficult. Even here, where the rules are different.”

“What rules?” Khalid asked.

“Are the laws of physics different here?” Moira chimed in.

Zak wished they would both just shut up. He was standing mere inches from his brother! Was Tommy not truly dead after all? Or was this alternate universe a place where people from his own world went after they died?

He waved his friends quiet with a look that said,
Stop messing with this!
Abashed, they both fell silent.

Tommy shook his head sadly, the curls of fog that drifted away from him with each motion making him look even sadder. “I'm here, stuck. Unable to leave the physical universe, to move on. Just like poor Godfrey.”

Zak peered around, knowing he would see nothing, but straining for a glimpse nonetheless. “Who's Godfrey?”

“He's my friend. He's a spirit, like I am, only he's been trapped for so much longer. He's endured … I don't have time to explain it all. Godfrey is from
this
universe,” Tommy said, “and he's making it possible for me to manifest like this. He has power.…”

“What kind of power?” Moira piped up.

Tommy inhaled again, and a little more of him vanished. “I have to explain everything.…” He paused. “No, there is no time for everything. I'll try to explain enough.”

“But—” Moira said.

Zak spun around and gave her a death glare. “He doesn't have time for questions! Let him talk!”

“Godfrey was on a ship,” Tommy told them, “sailing from the islands to Manhattan City. But a storm surprised them, and they were swamped. They should have been able to press through, but the hull was torn open, even though they were miles from shore.”

“Wait a second,” Khalid said. “
That
boat? The one under the World Trade Center? That was, like,
centuries
ago.”

“The boat crossed over,” Moira muttered. “It somehow slipped from this universe to ours, and there was land where they didn't expect it.”

Tommy went on as if they hadn't spoken. “He knew a spell, an old spell from the islands. He could live on after death. So he cast the spell and survived as a spirit. Alone until he met me.”

Tommy grinned sadly. Zak's throat tightened with horror and memory. Being alone like that would be the worst thing he could imagine. He had thought that
he
had been alone, but there had always been Khalid and Moira. And his parents, he supposed. This Godfrey person had been alone for a long, long time until he'd found Tommy.

“You and I share a special link, Zak. Closer than any other two people in the world, closer even than most twins. United by our birth and our disease. My death was only the beginning for me. Because of our connection, I remained bound to earth instead of moving on like most of the dead. Then Godfrey and I found each other. Two lost spirits, trapped in the land of the living for different reasons. But we realized that we could combine our strength and speak to you. You couldn't
always
hear us, but sometimes you could.”

“I thought you were imaginary. Or Uncle Tomás.”

Tommy paused and opened his mouth to speak again. Zak realized, to his horror, that Tommy's feet had dissolved into a chaotic, foggy swirl of colors, and the effect was slowly climbing up his legs. It was as though he were unraveling before their eyes.

“We had to bring you here,” Tommy said quickly, aware of his time ticking away. “This world works differently. You would call it magic, but it really isn't. Here, Godfrey and I have a chance to live again.”

“How?” Zak stepped even closer, and the conflicted eddies of light and fog that made up Tommy's form became more indistinct. He was fading with each passing instant—Zak had to learn as much as possible. Now.

“We need energy. Power. You'll have to figure out most of it for yourself,” Tommy said. By now, he'd unraveled even further—from his chest down, he was a dissipating patch of smoke, rapidly vanishing into the night air. “Godfrey says you'll need something called electroleum. It's a power source, and more. It—”

“It sounds dangerous,” Khalid said nervously.

By now Tommy's body had disappeared all the way up to his throat. He was a wispy head floating in the air above a fast-clearing wedge of smoke, with one arm still drifting loose, like a marionette's controlled by a separate puppeteer. “Completely safe. We need a massive energy source. Will free us.” He was beginning to sound garbled, like a drowning man calling for help. But panic never touched his eyes. They bore into Zak, drilling deep to plant the importance of what he said. “Rupture walls between life and death,” he said. “So much energy. Set us free.”

His face and head unraveled then, spinning out into a gentle drift of vapor until there was nothing left of him save for a smear of color on the air.

And then that, too, disintegrated, torn apart by the breeze, and they saw nothing but the night and the sky and the trees and the water, and even in Zak's own mind, they were alone again.

*   *   *

Zak heard Moira and Khalid chattering nearby, but he stayed rooted to the spot where Tommy had manifested and then disappeared. Zak sought any kind of contact—nothing came. He'd been so close! Tommy was … well, not
alive
, maybe, but still existing. Still himself. Even on some kind of … spirit plane. The idea should have sounded ridiculous to Zak. It was the garbage and nonsense his dad had railed against his whole life. But then again, his dad had also lied to him his whole life. His dad didn't know everything. So who cared what his dad thought.

Besides: His dad was in another universe entirely. Dad—and Mom and Dr. Campbell and everyone else who had deceived him—didn't matter anymore. He had his best friends with him, and he would soon have his twin brother as well.

That was all he needed.

If only he could make contact! As much as he tried, he could detect not even the tiniest bit of Tommy or the mysterious Godfrey. Maybe they'd used too much of their power to speak to him. Maybe it would take time.

Yeah. Time. That's all. It would just take time.

Khalid and Moira approached Zak. “You all right, man?”

“Do you need a second?” Moira asked.

Did he? The sensible thing was probably to sit down and try to clear his mind. But the problem was, his mind felt totally clear. For the first time in a long time, he didn't doubt his own sanity or his own senses. His brother was kinda alive, kinda dead, but it was the kinda-alive part that mattered. Tommy
was
, and there was a way to make him whole again.

“I don't need a minute,” he told them. “I need to find out where we are, first.”

“One map coming up.” Khalid pulled his phone out of his pocket and fired it up. It flickered for a moment, then died.

“Water, idiot,” Moira said. “We ruined our phones when we crossed over into the ocean.”

“The Conflux,” Zak corrected her.

“Right. The Conflux. And even if our phones
did
work, they wouldn't work anyway.”

Khalid blinked. “Even
I
know that doesn't make any sense.”

But Zak got it. “There probably aren't compatible cell phone networks over here. They might not even use Wi-Fi. Who knows?”

They stared at each other. For the first time, Zak realized, he had no idea what to do next. They'd come over into the water, so they'd swum to shore. And then they'd tried to figure out where they were. And then they'd listened to Tommy.

But now?

There was nothing for them to do.

Nothing at all.

*   *   *

Feeling suddenly exposed out by the Conflux, they retreated from the water's edge, deeper into the park, following one of the pathways. The park was lit by that same odd sort of pale light they saw on the buildings uptown, captured in decorative swirls atop tall poles. It bathed the trees and the pathways with a soft glow that reminded Zak of early, dim sunlight behind curtains.

A little ways in, among a cluster of trees and shrubbery, they found an odd-looking bench on the side of the path. It was made of something that looked like bronze, with ornate, curling armrests. Zak, exhausted, slumped into the seat.

“You think it's safe here?” Khalid asked.

“We've been here, yelling at each other, for a while, and no one has shown up,” Zak reasoned. “It's probably okay.”

“We don't know what or where is safe,” Moira pointed out. “So we should be cautious no matter what.”

“Buzzkill,” Khalid said lightly, but then made a point of pacing a perimeter, poking into bushes and looking around trees. Moira followed his example, and once they were reasonably certain they were alone, they both joined Zak on the bench.

“Did we really just see a ghost?” Khalid said. “Because I have to tell you—this is way freakier than I signed up for.”

“There are some theories,” Moira said, “that the body's electrical impulses could continue after physical death. It's all sort of bull, though.” She shrugged. “Then again, we're in a whole different universe. The physics here could be different.
Everything
could be different.”

“But there's still air to breathe,” Khalid said. “There's still trees and buildings. I don't get it. It's a whole 'nother universe, right? Why isn't it weirder?”

Moira shrugged. “I don't know. If there's an infinite number of universes, some of them are going to look a lot like ours. Like, what did you have for breakfast this morning?”

“Oatmeal,” Khalid said.

“Sure, okay.” Moira nodded enthusiastically, warming up. “So, somewhere out there is a universe
exactly
like our own with the only difference being that you had scrambled eggs instead of oatmeal.”

“That sounds like a waste of a universe. And I hate eggs.”

“Not in that universe,” Moira said. “That universe's Khalid likes eggs. And that's the only difference. But from that tiny difference, big changes can happen. A ripple effect. You eating eggs instead of oatmeal could end up changing the world in big ways.”

“I always knew I was important.”

“We need to focus, guys.” The conversation was interesting, but Zak didn't think speculating about Khalid's breakfast choices was going to help them. “We saw what we saw,” he told them. “We're not going to start second-guessing it, okay? We all saw it. We all heard it. It happened. This isn't about theories. It's about what we actually witnessed. Now we have to figure out what to do next. We can't just sit around this place.”

“We need a plan,” Moira agreed. “We need to figure out a way home.”

“First we need to rescue Tommy. And this Godfrey kid, too. He's the one, guys. The one I've been seeing in my visions. He was the kid on the boat, and he's in trouble, too.”

Moira gnawed at her bottom lip. “Zak, if we get the chance to go home, we should take it—”

“He's my
brother
, Moira! He was missing my whole life, and now I can get him back. I'm not giving up on that.”

“I'm not saying you should. But if we come up with a way home first, we have to use it.”

“Says who?”

“Guys!” Conveniently, Khalid was sitting between them, so it was easy for him to lean in and stop their argument. “It's all a moot point right now anyway. We have no idea
how
to get home. All we know is what Tommy told us. Unless you want to roam this world looking for a door back home, the only sensible thing to do is what he said. Tommy said his friend Godfrey has power, right? Maybe we help Godfrey, then Godfrey helps us.”

That sounded good to Zak. Moira considered for a moment, then agreed. “In most classic alternate-universe fiction, there's a guide of some sort who appears after the characters cross over, to sort of introduce them to the new world and set them on their quest.”

“Well, unless you think that fish I saw in the water counts as a guide, I say we go with Tommy,” Khalid joked.

Moira smiled. “I wish I knew how we got here in the first place. We were down in the subway, and then we saw the water—”

“Wait, wait, wait. You guys saw that?” Zak's head spun. He hadn't realized that, for the first time, someone else had seen the sights he'd thought were for his eyes only. The evidence that Something Strange Was Going On was all around them now, but it still made him feel better that Moira and Khalid had seen the same thing he had, in
their
world.