The Whisper (15 page)

“Latching on,” Chip said, pressing more buttons. “Drawing it in.”

The image of the body got bigger, as if it were moving closer to them, and as it got bigger, it pulled its hands to its face and its knees to its chest, making itself into a ball.

“Opening the hatch,” Chip said, fingers leaping from button to button. Then a sound—a mechanical flit.

“He's angry,” Dot said as skinny loops of paper piled up at her feet. “Plenty angry.”

The image disappeared from the counter, and the counter opened up in the middle, like a pair of church doors. A man—now more than an image, now flesh and blood—floated up and out of the opening. The opening snapped shut, became a counter again, and the man, still curled up, fell down onto its surface. Another flit, and the glass shell shot up and around the new captive.

“Human as well, at least by the looks of him,” Chip remarked.

“Vital signs are perfect,” Dot said, typing away. “Blood is pump, pump, pumping.”

Alistair moved closer to the glass to get a better look. “Who is he?”

“Oh, we get swimmers like you all the time,” Dot said. “Though they're always younger than this guy. And most are smart enough to wear spacesuits. It's dangerous to be out there for more than a minute or two. You were lucky we pulled you in when we did. So is this character.”

The man was still curled in a ball, but his feet were fidgeting. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a slightly dirty T-shirt. He rolled over onto his back, but his hands still covered his face.

“So he's another swimmer?” Alistair asked.

“Not necessarily,” Chip said, still at the buttons. “Sometimes a cipher will sneak through, or someone will drop one through a gateway for us, like it's some cipher laundry chute.”

Alistair took another step closer because he recognized the jeans the man was wearing. They were plain old blue jeans, but he was familiar with the stains, the rips. He took yet another step closer, and the man must have heard him, because he turned his head toward Alistair and pulled his hands away from his face.

Alistair stopped. He stared into the man's eyes.

“Kyle?” Alistair asked.

 

1987

Kyle Dwyer back home. He was Charlie's older brother, but that wasn't obvious to the casual observer. Charlie's face was chubby; Kyle's was close to gaunt. Charlie shuffled; Kyle sauntered. While Charlie was at home playing video games, Kyle was out “playing the field.” They weren't buddies, probably never had been. If you said a bad word about Charlie, Kyle would defend him, because that's what an older brother does. Otherwise, they steered clear of each other.

Kyle was arrested once. It was a sunny autumn afternoon, the beginning of fifth grade for Alistair. He and Keri had just come home from school, and their father met them at the front door and presented them with a pair of rakes. Grumbling, they took to the front yard, where they clawed at the mess of leaves. A police cruiser carrying two officers glided past. Lights weren't blaring. There was no emergency.

Ten minutes later, the cruiser was heading the other way and it stopped in front of Alistair's house because a pair of plastic trash cans had rolled into the road. The officer on the passenger side got out to move the cans, and Kyle's face was framed in the backseat window. Kyle smiled and held up his hands. Cuffs decorated his wrists.

“Can you say
jailbird
?” Keri whispered as she rested her rake against a tree.

The officer tossed the cans into the Colters' yard next door, and Kyle blew on the window, fogging up the glass. Using a finger, he wrote out a message that Alistair read as:

TUO EM KAERB

“Is that, like, written in Russian or something?” Alistair asked as the officer climbed back into the cruiser and they pulled away.

Keri cracked up. “No. That's, like, written in Moron. He wrote the letters backward, but not the words.”

Alistair furrowed his brow. With the car gone, he'd already forgotten the exact letters, so it would be tough to solve. Keri grabbed her rake and used the handle to lightly poke him in the ribs. “‘Break me out,'” she said.

“Oh…”

“So you gonna do it?”

“I assume … it's a joke?”

“You think?” she said with a laugh.

“I wonder what he did.”

Keri attacked the leaves with the rake and looked up quizzically. “Sold black-market babies. Spied for the Commies. Squeezed the Charmin. Could be anything.”

*   *   *

“A butterfly knife,” Charlie told Alistair over the phone later that evening. “They found it in his locker after school.”

“How'd they know it was there?” Alistair asked.

“Anonymous tip.”

“Is he going to jail?”

Charlie huffed. “Probably not even juvie. He's only sixteen, and this is his first offense. I think the police wanted to scare him. He's suspended for two weeks, though.”

“Man,” Alistair said. “What are your parents doing?”

“Freaking,” Charlie said. “Dad mentioned something about kicking him out.”

“You think they would?”

“Naw. It's a bluff. Mom wouldn't let it happen.”

“So what are they gonna do to him?”

Charlie adopted a deep voice, an impression of his father.
“Gonna teach him right from wrong. How to be a civil member of society.”

Alistair knew that Kyle wasn't a perfect guy, but Kyle had always been nice to him. “Why do you think he had the knife?” he asked.

With a strangely joyful laugh, Charlie said, “For stabbing, of course.”

 

CHAPTER 12

Hands pressed against the glass, fingers stained with tobacco, nails filled with gunk. Sunken eyes, a mole on his cheek, a crooked incisor. This was Kyle. The same one from the police car, from the neighborhood, from all that came before. To Alistair, there was no doubt.

“Is that you, Cleary?” Kyle asked.

Chip, who had been frantically pressing buttons, paused and asked, “You know each other?”

Alistair's gaze didn't budge from Kyle's face. “Yes, it's me,” Alistair said. “Are you okay?”

“I'm…” Kyle's voice faded as he pulled up his shirt and revealed a bloody wound in his stomach.

“Vital signs are
perfect
,” Dot said again, making sure there was no confusion about it. She typed away.

“BS!” Alistair snapped. “He's clearly injured. You have to get him out of there. You have to help him.”

“How do you know this guy?” Chip asked.

“He's from home,” Alistair said. “He's a … friend.”

“That's right,” Kyle said with a gurgling chuckle. “Discountin' the fact that the kid shot me, we're good buds. From way back in Thessaly.”

“How'd you get here?” Alistair asked as he placed his hand on the glass.

Kyle rubbed his face with his dirty fingers. “There was, like, a fishbowl and … rain … and it's a bit of a blur, honestly.”

Dot consulted her stream of paper and said, “It's hard to tell if he's lying or not.” She pulled the swirling glasses back down over her eyes. “But this skeleton? Definitely not primate.”

“What the hell can a stupid typewriter and glasses tell you?” Alistair asked. “He's a friend. He's in trouble. That's all you need to know.”

Dot ignored Alistair. “So, Kyle, if that really is your name,” she said, pushing her glasses back up to her brow, “I have a question for you. Let's pretend you have this magic lamp and there's a genie inside. The genie grants you three wishes. He says that one wish will come true. One wish will not come true. And one wish will backfire. It will cause the opposite to happen. Only you don't know what will happen with each wish. So what are your three wishes?”

Alistair threw up his hands. “Are you kidding me?”

“We know, buddy,” Chip said. “It's a bit weird, but it's necessary.”

“A bit weird?” Alistair said. “It's plain stupid. Kyle, say you don't want to make a wish. That's how I answered, and they let me out.”

Dot shot Alistair a disapproving look. “If he says that, then we'll definitely know he's a cipher.”

“What? You make no sense.” Alistair put his hands back on the glass and tried to shake it open. Impossible.

“Don't sweat it, little guy,” Kyle said. “I got this. I've even heard this riddle before. My three wishes would be…”

He put up a thumb. “Numero uno: I'd wish for infinite wishes.”

He put up an index finger. “Second wish: I'd wish that I'd never met the genie.”

He put up his middle finger and lowered the thumb and the index. “Wish the third: I'd wish you'd all stick this where the sun don't shine.”

Then he laughed, hard.

If anything was going to seal it for Alistair, a vulgar joke was it. “That's definitely Kyle,” he said. “You have to let him out.”

It also sealed it for Dot and Chip. “Cipher?” Dot asked.

Chip sighed and confirmed. “Cipher.”

All the yellow lights in the room shifted over to red. Chip pressed some buttons. Water began to fill Kyle's chamber, pooling up around him like a bath being drawn.

“What's going on, little guy?” Kyle asked Alistair.

“They're trying to drown you,” Alistair cried as he sprinted over to the wall and slapped his hand against every button he could.

Chip and Dot didn't bother to stop him. Water kept coming. “Sorry, guy,” Chip said. “Press all you want, but if you don't know the combos, you aren't gonna do a thing. It's like playing a piano. You can't hit random keys and get Beethoven.”

The water was up to Kyle's chin when he said, “Okay, you can shut off the taps. Point taken. You don't appreciate gettin' flipped the bird.”

“You're insane!” Alistair yelled at Chip and Dot.

“He's a cipher,” Dot said calmly.

“He's a friend!”

“He's a cipher,” Chip echoed.

As the water slipped over his face, Kyle began to fight. He swung his fists and feet wildly. Alistair ran back to the glass shell. The chamber was soon full, and Kyle was flailing under the water, his arms and legs slowed by the liquid. Alistair pounded on the glass. It didn't give at all. “Let him out!” Alistair cried. “Let him out! Let him out! Let him out!”

“He's trying to fool you,” Dot said.

“He may look like the guy you know, but he's not that guy,” Chip added. “Trust us.”

“Let him out! Please! Just let him out!”

“He's a monster. Sent to trick. Sent to destroy,” Dot said.

With the chamber now full, Kyle's eyes rolled back. His body went limp, floated to the top, and pressed against the glass. The blood from the wound in his stomach swayed red ribbons through the water.

“Let him out. Let him out. Let him out…” Alistair's voice faded as his fists slowed down and finally stopped. He spread his palms across the glass and positioned them so he was almost cupping Kyle's lifeless face.

More typing and button-pushing, lights shifting to green, then the counter opened again and the water and Kyle's body slipped away. Even more button-pushing and the walls and ceiling folded up and Alistair, Chip, and Dot were back among the collection of ciphers. At a far end of the gallery, Kyle's body ascended from a hole in the floor. A stick shot up and mounted him in place, his body frozen in a manic pose—fingers curled, joints bent, like he was about to pounce. He was now part of the collection.

*   *   *

The instinct to run was strong. This place was poison. These kids were heartless. And Alistair had a chance. He spotted a door, not far past where they'd mounted Kyle.

“Don't bother, ace,” Chip said, placing a firm hand on Alistair's shoulder. “You wouldn't know how to open it, anyway.”

Dot passed Alistair her glasses. “Put them on.”

“I don't follow orders from murderers,” Alistair replied.

“Put them on,” Dot repeated. “And then you can apologize to us.”

“Put 'em on, buddy,” Chip said, in a much kinder tone. “You'll want to see this.”

The glasses were warm and hummed as if a little motor was running inside them, but the lenses looked normal. It was only when Dot had worn them that the red and white spirals had appeared.

“What the heck am I supposed to see?” Alistair asked.

“Proof that we're not murderers,” Dot said. Then she snatched the glasses back, flicked her wrist to open the frames, and slipped them over Alistair's face.

Everything became black or glowed an electric purple. A purple skull, with dark eye sockets and slightly crooked teeth, hovered in front of Alistair. “See what we mean?” the skull said in Dot's voice.

The punch of surprise knocked Alistair back a few steps. Two purple human skeletons with two purple skulls stood in front of him, presenting their hands in a gesture of peace. “Spooky, right?” said a skeleton in Chip's voice.

Alistair raised his own hand in front of his face and, sure enough, there was no flesh to see, only purple glowing bones. “X-ray?”

“Specs,” the skeletal Chip said. “That's right. X-ray specs. Finest you'll ever wear.”

“Look around,” the skeletal Dot said.

This was an order Alistair was happy to follow. For years, ever since he saw them advertised in the back of a magazine, he'd wanted a pair of these things. Even after Keri had told him they were “as fake as the tooth fairy,” he'd harbored hopes that someday science would catch up with his desires.

Though he was unlikely to admit it, back home, he would've wanted them to see through clothes, and he would've used them for more scandalous purposes. Here in Quadrant 43, they saw through flesh, and all he had were ciphers to look at. Mounted in the displays were glowing skeletons. There were the bones of a dog, maybe a hippo, possibly a sloth, and numerous other animals of various shapes and sizes. When Alistair lowered the glasses to the tip of his nose and peered over the rims, the same ciphers—those misshapen and terrifying monsters—populated the room, but when he pushed the glasses back up, it was animal bones that lurked inside of the flesh.