The Whisper (22 page)

Charlie blew a little raspberry, which must have stung a bit because his lip was red and swollen, and then he reached out a hand and made a
come here
gesture with his index and middle fingers.

Alistair peeled off the jersey.

“Lenny yelled ‘What in tarnation?' when he came in and found those guys busting me up,” Charlie said with a little laugh. “
What in tarnation!
Janitor hardly ever speaks, and those are the words he decides to use. I thought only the Looney Tunes talked like that.”

Alistair tossed him the jersey. “I sent him in, you know. It's all I could think to do.”

“I know,” Charlie said, catching it and pressing it to his chest. “That's why we're doing the swap. You think this jersey is big money? That T-shirt I gave you is a limited edition. It's worth even more now because of the blood. You're being rewarded.”

Closer inspection revealed that it was a shirt Charlie had made himself, using iron-on decals. White letters on green fabric read
POPULAR
. Charlie had worn it so much that Alistair no longer saw the joke in it. Now, bloodstained and ripped, it seemed more sad than funny.

“They call me Captain Catpoop,” Charlie said as he pulled the rugby over his head.

“I know,” Alistair said, trying on his new shirt, which was at least a size too big.

“I'm going to make a T-shirt with ‘Captain Catpoop' written on it. If that's what the people want, then that's what they'll get.”

The wind rustled leaves on the trees that edged the swamp—a soft, sarcastic round of applause. Alistair hugged himself to stay warm. “I'm so sorry,” he said.

Charlie bent over and picked up a cat that was sneaking past. Its coat was ratty and its eyes glowed a ghostly yellow, but as soon as Charlie had it in his arms, it unleashed a delicate purr. “Nothing to be sorry about. Like I said. That's why you get the shirt. You sent in Lenny and he sent the guys scattering. In ten years, that shirt will be a collector's item, something to frame.”

The only place Alistair had seen framed T-shirts was at a local restaurant called Hungry Paul's, and those were usually advertising pancakes or a softball team, not really anything worth collecting. “Why will it be a collector's item?” Alistair asked.

“Because I designed it, and people will never forget my designs,” Charlie said. He moved his hand down, as if to stroke the cat, but instead, he gave it a pinch. It hissed and Charlie dropped it. It scampered off into the dark swamp behind the clubhouse, and Charlie patted himself on the chest, feeling the fabric of his new shirt, and he purred too, in his own way, a deep, rumbling hum.

 

CHAPTER 17

The memory made Alistair even woozier than he already was, and when he regained his senses, he found himself alone in the cafetorium with the Weeble girl.

“Taking a standing nap?” she asked. “I do those.”

“What were you saying again?” he asked. “About where he went?”

“The toilet,” she said. “He comes and goes through the crapper. Figured you would know that. That's how all the greats travel.”

“Which toilet? Which way?”

The girl couldn't point, so she tried to lean in the right direction, but it sent her body wobbling back and forth. Amusing, but hardly useful, so Alistair consulted his atlas. The gateway to Macrotopia was in a second-floor bathroom. That had to be it.

He gauged a route and followed it through the hallway and up a flight of stairs. The bathroom was clearly marked by a model toilet hanging from a chain above the door.
Must be fancy,
he thought as he pushed his way in.

Stained sinks, mirrors smudged with fingerprints, urinals with small puddles underneath—it was exactly like a school bathroom back home. There were even a couple of oddballs in the corner, huddled over, trying to spark a cigarette. Only these oddballs were
truly
odd.

They lifted their heads. A lighter hit the floor. They put their hands up like they were being arrested. “Oh, it's only you,” a kid that looked like a sock puppet said. “You're too late, alien. The Maestro came and went. The groupies have moved on. But the throne is all yours if you want it.”

The other one, who was entirely pixelated, pointed to a stall that was so covered in graffiti that it looked like a printing press had exploded.

Flush, flush, flush yourself, gently down the drain.

Here you stoop, fat and weird, came to poop but disappeared.

Bon voyage, alien!

It was a tiny fraction of the messages—there were much stranger and cruder ones—but the overall point was clear. This stall marked an exit, a gateway.

The toilet that sat in the center of the stall was nothing special. White, porcelain, round. Was he supposed to sit on it? Was he supposed to do what everyone does on a toilet? How could he even attempt such a thing with others watching? As it was, there was no door on the stall.

Alistair turned around and faced the two delinquents. There was nothing to do but shrug.

“Well, get on with it,” the pixelated kid said. “If you want the big suck, then step right up.”

Alistair checked the toilet, checked the kid. “Step in it?” he asked.

“He's no Maestro,” the sock puppet kid said. “That's for damn sure.”

Alistair took that as a yes and, bracing himself on the tank, he brought one foot up and placed it in the bowl. His body was still damp from the pool, and he hardly noticed his moccasined foot entering the water.

“Flush, flush, flush,” the sock puppet started to chant, not without a fair dose of sarcasm.

Trusting the bowl's sturdiness, Alistair eased the other foot up and in.

“Flush. Flush. Flush.” The pixelated kid joined in the chant.

When he felt steady, he straightened his legs, let go of the tank, and stood.

“Flush! Flush! Flush!” Alistair could feel the chant now, pulsing through his ribs. One last time he checked over his shoulder. The two had managed to light their cigarettes, which dangled loosely from their lips. They pumped their fists and blew smoke as they chanted.

The handle was too low to reach with his hand, so Alistair wedged the atlas in an armpit, placed his palms against the wall behind the toilet, and carefully lifted his left foot.

Here we go.

As he pressed the handle down with the tips of his toes, the atlas slipped out, hit the porcelain rim, and fell on the floor.

Flush.

*   *   *

There were days and nights and days and nights. For months the chase went on, Charlie always a step ahead of Alistair.

It started in Macrotopia, a world where everything was large, or maybe it was that Alistair was especially small. Insects and woodland creatures towered over him, and they all spoke in rhyme. He described Charlie Dwyer to them, and a salamander said, “His acquaintance I made in a fair summer glade, though he did not give me his name. I thought it unwise to spar with death flies, but he entered their cave just the same.”

The salamander led Alistair through a forest of grass to a hole in the ground full of wasps. Any reluctance Alistair had about entering the hole was overshadowed by the giant gopher that tried to eat him. It was a cipher for sure, and it may have been an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire situation, but Alistair chose wasp stings over stomach acid and dove headfirst into the hole, landing in a dewdrop that rested on the giant hive.

From the bottom of the wasp hole in Macrotopia, Alistair emerged at the top of a mound of strawberries. He could have sat there, bemoaning the loss of his atlas, but instead he channeled that anger. He slid down the mound of strawberries until he reached a moat of cream that he swam across to a land made of shortcake, where he asked a girl in a bonnet if she saw a boy sneak by, and she giggled and showed him a bathtub cut from peppermint candy, which Alistair sat down in and turned on the tap and transported himself to another world.

For eight days after that, Alistair traveled through a nearly empty desert, sleeping in a tent, drinking mango juice, and eating dried meat sold to him by a camel that asked for payment in a song. He sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” which delighted the camel enough to tell him of an oasis many miles in the distance, but not enough to offer Alistair a ride. So Alistair made his way by foot and dove into the oasis's pool at the first chance he got.

A world made exclusively of letters and numerals tested Alistair's mettle, as did the number 666, a cipher that hounded him across a landscape of college-ruled paper, until Alistair realized that if he convinced an
H
, a
2
, and an
O
to huddle together, they would become water and offer him a way to escape.

From world to world he traveled, hoping instinct would guide him. He trusted no one by trusting everyone. Without the atlas, he had no idea where he was going, and whether someone lied to him or not made little difference. His life became one of momentum. Find a gateway. Move on.

He visited a land where babies rode on the backs of whales and cast spells by flapping their oversize ears. He lived in a mountain town for a few days, where mountain men were gruff but welcoming so long as he helped them gut the furry snakes they turned into garments for the rich figments that lived in a glittering city in the valley below. He saw versions of America in the 1950s, China in the 1670s, France in the 1340s, and Africa in a year before years. He steered clear of any obvious ciphers, though there seemed to be one lurking in nearly every world he visited. He chose to run rather than fight, and when he wasn't running, he was describing Charlie Dwyer to locals.

Some knew him as the Maestro. Others knew him by different names: the Chief, Dr. Wondrous, even Captain Catpoop. “He went thattaway,” they'd all tell Alistair, pointing to the most treacherous paths imaginable.

The memories, sparked by images and encounters, kept coming, mostly when Alistair slept, but they were less frequent with each day. He remembered other incidents at school and in the neighborhood, other moments with his family, with Charlie.

With Charlie. Almost always with Charlie.

He had no control over them and wished that Fiona were more prominent in them, but beggars can't be choosers and soon he was simply begging to have more memories,
any
memories, to connect him to home. He had longed for home during those first few weeks, but he was missing it less and less. He was forgetting what it was like there.

When it got to the point that he hadn't been visited by a memory in over a week, he worried that he might have no memories at all.
There's evil in you,
Dot had said, and Alistair wondered if that was true, if losing his link to home was punishment, or if it was part of an inevitable transformation into something dark, disconnected, truly lost.

Resting on a puffy batch of cumulonimbus in a land made of clouds, he prayed.

“One more memory. All that I ask. Whoever is in charge. The Whisper, the Riverman, Charlie, whoever. Please.”

Sometimes prayers are answered.

 

1989

Fiona Loomis back home, sixth-grade English class, called to the blackboard.

“Diagram the sentence,” Mrs. Delson said.

On the blackboard was written:
The petulant girl ran away from home.
Fiona grumbled something under her breath and picked up the chalk. She held it close to the blackboard for a second, then set it down on the sill. She grabbed the eraser and ran it across the slate, wiping the sentence into oblivion. She walked back to her seat.

“Miss Loomis,” Mrs. Delson said, “why would you do that?”

“I don't like that sentence,” Fiona said as she sat.

“Well, I hope you like staying after class,” Mrs. Delson said.

Later, through the foyer windows, Alistair saw Fiona standing outside on the basketball courts, clapping two blackboard erasers together. A cloud of chalk dust hung in front of her like a ghost.

 

CHAPTER 18

The memory was there and gone in seconds. The agony of the tease jolted Alistair's eyes open. Above him, sitting cross-legged on a small cloud, was Charlie Dwyer.

His thumbs tapped his toes, as if he was excited to see Alistair, or as if he was nervous. It was hard to tell. “Did you enjoy that moment?” Charlie asked.

Alistair lunged, thrusting a hand at Charlie, hoping to grab something, anything. But Charlie was too quick and he flapped his arms twice, causing the cloud he was sitting on to move higher in the sky. Alistair did the same—flapped his arms—but his cloud didn't move.

“I wish I could give you more memories, but I don't have control of that,” Charlie said. “It's Aquavania that gives you that. You call it Aquavania, don't you?”

“Is that really you?” Alistair asked, reaching again, trying to touch him, even though he knew he was too far away. Charlie's skin seemed even saggier than before. In the sunlight, it hardly looked real.

“You know what?” Charlie said. “The figments don't seem to notice when I put this skin on, but a swimmer like you will spot it every time. I guess I don't need it around you.”

Grabbing a handful of his own hair, Charlie tugged. One, two, three. Then his skin slipped from his body like a sock from a foot. The body beneath the skin was still shaped liked Charlie, but it was both colorless and faceless. Fiona had described the Riverman as a creature who looked like the spaces between the stars in the night sky, and that's exactly what Charlie looked like. A wraith, a specter. Terrible and wonderful and infinite.

He held the skin up, then tossed it into the breeze, and it flapped away as if it were newspaper. Thin beams of sunlight suddenly became solid and clung to Charlie's body. Tiny luminescent worms undulated on his skin.

“You're…”

“This is who I am here,” Charlie said. “This is how I look. I often have to wear my Charlie skin so I don't spook the figments. But I'm still Charlie. I'm also the Maestro. And I'm the Riverman. I'm the Whisper.”