The Vexed Generation, page 14
Brewster said, “The lights are out. That might suggest that he really isn’t here.”
“It also suggests that we’re in the 1100s, and electric lights haven’t been invented yet,” Gilbert said. “Don’t feel bad. Time travel takes a lot of getting used to, but you have to keep in mind where and when you are. Besides, it doesn’t matter if he’s home or not. We’re going in either way. Take off your hats, kiddos. This’ll be good practice for you. We’re teleporting in. Ten feet forward should do it.”
As the twins removed and reached into their hats, the displays built into the hats’ linings lit up, allowing them to see the interfaces despite the light-warping invisibility spell surrounding them on the outside.
A few seconds later, they all stood in the front room of Phillip’s shop. They removed their invisibility spells and put their hats back on.
Mattie stepped closer to the shelves lining the back wall. There, in a place of prominence, a creature that appeared to be the front half of a dead squirrel, stuffed, shaved, and sewn to the back half of a dead frog, stuffed, and with hair glued to it, lay in a large glass jar.
“What kind of person would have something like this?” she muttered, not really expecting an answer.
Sid gave her one. “A person who’s attempting to convince superstitious peasants that he is a wizard. These are simply props, Mattie. Nothing more. Gilbert and I own an apparatus that looks as if it was designed solely to cut people into three equal parts and then to display the segments. Our apparatus is better designed, and far less dust covered, but the same principle applies. This way, now. If Phillip’s here, he’s gonna be upstairs.”
Gilbert led the twins through a beaded curtain into the darkened séance room. Sid brought up the rear. They walked around a table holding a crystal ball, past velvet draperies scrawled with logos of various eighties rock bands altered slightly to look like arcane runic symbols. At the back of the room they came to a door, which led to stairs.
The four of them climbed the staircase. Gilbert looked back over his shoulder at the others. “I’m told at one time he had a lot of spells and such on this door and staircase so nobody but him could see what he had up here.”
Brewster said, “That seems suspicious.”
“It was,” Gilbert said. “Everybody thought so, even your parents. But it turns out he wasn’t up to anything bad.”
“How’d they find out?” Brewster asked.
“He told them.”
Mattie snorted. “Yeah, that proves it.”
They stepped up onto the landing and soaked in their surroundings: track lighting illuminated furniture made of white leather and chrome, and framed posters depicted women with snow-white skin and jet-black hair standing in front of pastel-colored triangles and squiggly lines. The room also contained a massive rack-mounted stereo with speakers the size of tombstones, a full-size arcade cabinet, and a white Pontiac Fiero.
“As you can see,” Sid said, “Phillip chooses to live in the past, both literally and figuratively.”
Mattie opened her mouth to speak, but she never got the words out. At that moment, a huge, white, furry creature with tusks on the side of its head, sharp yellow teeth, and long black claws appeared in the middle of the room. The creature roared and swiped its massive paws menacingly.
Next to the monster, a man appeared. He wore a trench coat and a fedora with a long, pointed top sewn over the crown. He had a five-o’clock shadow and iron-gray hair and wielded the bridge cue from a pool table in his hands.
On the other side of the monster, a ball of flame roared into existence, then stretched in two directions, becoming a line that bent around tight corners until it formed a pentagram of fire in midair. The light and heat from the flames flashed brighter before subsiding, fading away to reveal a thin, pale man in a black robe and hat. His right foot stuck out from the hem of the robe and appeared to consist only of bare bone stripped of flesh. Behind him another man appeared, smaller and less well-groomed, wearing a tuxedo jacket over a shirt and pants that appeared to be made of burlap. This second man held a gunny sack with a pentagram painted on its front.
The man in the trench coat said, “You’re trespassing. Stop right where you are and drop those canes.”
“Or what?” Sid asked. “You’ll pot us like a black ball at the crucible?”
The man in the trench coat looked confused.
Sid said, “You’re holding a billiards cue. It’s a snooker reference. You Yanks! There are games other than Eight Ball, you know.”
“And really, a Wampa?” Gilbert said to the white, furry creature. “That’s the scariest thing you could think of to turn into? All it really did was slap Luke on the side of the face and scratch him with its fingernails. You might as well have shown up here as a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills.”
The man in the black robe shouted, “Shut up!”
“Oh, very good,” Sid said. “That’s certainly in keeping with your theme. Lo, a fearsome wizard sprang forth from a fiery pentagram, and in a voice throbbing with arcane power, bade us to shut up.”
The wizard turned to the filthy man in the tuxedo jacket. “Hubert, hand me the Rod of Raimi!”
“What is he, your caddy?” Gilbert asked.
Mattie leaned toward Brewster and whispered, “Do they look familiar to you?”
Brewster squinted. “Yeah, maybe.”
The dirty little man in the tuxedo jacket reached into his gunny sack and pulled out a bronze stick about a foot long, decorated with tiny carvings of skulls and demons. He handed it to the wizard in black, who whipped it forward at Gilbert, Sid, Mattie, and Brewster as if he were casting a rod and reel.
A bright light shone from the upper corner of the room, accompanied by a loud tearing noise. The four of them couldn’t help but look at it. As their heads turned in unison, the world seemed to shift beneath their feet. Later, they theorized that the spell somehow affected their inner ears, but the result was the feeling that the entire world had suddenly, jarringly tilted twenty degrees. Then, the light went out, replaced by a torrent of viscous green-and-brown fluid that flowed down over them, covering their faces and drenching their clothing. They grabbed each other for support, but only managed to pull each other down into a slippery, writhing heap. They all wallowed for a moment, then the fluid gathered together and lifted off of them, flying back the direction it had come as if someone had simply reversed the film. Mattie, Brewster, Gilbert, and Sid all lay, bone-dry, jumbled on the floor, like the aftermath of a drunken game of Twister. Any sign of the repulsive flood that had knocked them over was gone.
Sid picked up his hat from the ground and scrambled to his feet. “Right. Enough of this foolishness!”
He bared his teeth as he reached into his hat, rummaged around a bit, then pulled out a rabbit.
Out of sheer instinct, the wizard in black and the Wampa both applauded, until the wizard in the trench coat glared at them, shaming them into silence.
Sid let go of the rabbit, which shot toward the wizards without so much as touching the ground first. It latched on to the throat of the man in the trench coat. He and the rabbit struggled briefly, then the rabbit launched itself toward the Wampa. The towering white beast swiped with its huge paw, knocking the bunny away and toward the wizard in black, who caught it just before the rabbit’s teeth reached his face.
Brewster asked, “Were you at our parents’ wedding?”
“Yes,” Mattie shouted. “That’s it! They were.”
“You were dressed like a Fremen.” Mattie pointed at the man in the trench coat. She moved her hand to point at the wizard in black. “And you, you were wearing a padded bodysuit and a blue Speedo. And I think we sat next to you at the theater when we went to Dad’s show!”
The wizard in black looked away from the struggling rabbit in his hands and studied the twins. “Are you Brewster and Mattie? Wow! I didn’t recognize you.”
The wizard in the trench coat said, “You’ve gotten so big!”
The Wampa nodded, opened its mouth, and let out a fearsome roar. It stopped abruptly, held up a single finger, made some quiet sounds like a large dog halfheartedly barking, and transformed into a black wizard in a purple robe and hat. “I said, you’re practically grown-ups. Where are your parents, and who are these guys? Are they bothering you?”
“Are we bothering them?” Gilbert asked. “You’re the ones who hosed them down with gore.”
Mattie said, “These are Gilbert and Sid. They’re friends of Dad.”
The man in the trench coat said, “Oh, yeah, of course. We’ve heard of you. You’re the guys from across the street. I’m Roy.”
The black man in the purple robe said, “I’m Tyler.”
The man in black said, “I’m Gary. This is my butler, Hubert. Sorry about the Rod of Raimi. It’s just that Phillip’s been missing for a couple of days. We can’t even find him using the file. We’ve got our friend Jeff working on it right now. Then you all appear at Phillip’s place, and we kind of assumed the worst.”
“What are you doing here?” Tyler asked.
“Looking for Phillip ourselves,” Gilbert said. “The kids believe he may have attacked Martin and Gwen.”
Roy said, “He didn’t.”
Mattie asked, “What? What do you mean, he didn’t? How would you know?”
“If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that Phillip would never hurt either of your parents.”
“Yes,” Sid said. “That’s precisely what we told them.”
“You don’t know,” Brewster said. “We were there. We know what we saw.”
“And that’s precisely the answer we got, as well,” Sid added.
16.
They flew in a loose formation over the rooftops and out of town. Mattie, Brewster and the magicians flew standing perpendicular to the ground, hands resting on their canes, capes flapping in the wind behind them. Roy, Tyler, and Gary flew tilted far forward, Superman style. Hubert rode in a glowing bubble of energy coming from Gary’s wizard staff.
Hubert looked over at Sid and examined his tuxedo. Sid noticed Hubert’s attention and nodded in a friendly but noncommittal greeting.
Hubert nodded back and asked, “So, how long have you been a butler?”
They flew low over the treetops, into a clearing full of dead trees, salted earth, an above-ground swimming pool, and a brick firepit. A cliff rose on the far side of the clearing. Carved into the cliff was a giant skull, its open mouth forming a cave. The group landed just inside the entrance.
Gary welcomed everyone to his home and led them through a large set of carved, ornamental doors, then a circular chamber with a large stone altar in the middle, past a second, smaller door, and into a large, comfortable apartment. He had decorated his home with stylish, handcrafted wooden furniture that failed to go with the green shag carpeting and retro-sixties conversation pit.
Gary used a communication spell to call Jeff and invite him over. Jeff signaled his intention to accept the invitation by materializing in Gary’s living room before they’d hung up the call.
Mattie and Brewster told everyone what they saw and heard the night of the attack. They described what they did after the attack, what further events transpired, and how they reacted, leading all the way to the moment they appeared, along with Gilbert and Sid, in Phillip’s rec room.
The adults listened respectfully until the story reached its conclusion, then they discussed what they’d heard. In the end, the wizards quickly reached a consensus on two points.
They agreed that Martin and Gwen would be proud of the great bravery and resourcefulness that the twins had shown in dealing with a very traumatic experience.
They also agreed that now that the grown-up wizards were aware of the situation, the best course of action would be for them to take over all of the investigation and protect the twins by having them remain safe and sound in Gary’s cave, “playing video games or something.”
“Yeah,” Gary said. “You can have a lot of fun here. I have an N64. You can play GoldenEye!”
Mattie said, “I’m trying very hard not to swear at you idiots right now.”
Gary said, “Your mother would appreciate that. Though she probably wouldn’t like you calling us idiots.”
“Why not?” Roy asked. “She’s called us that herself, many times.”
Brewster said, “I can see why.”
Roy tilted his head and smiled at the twins. “I know it’s hard to understand, kids, but your parents would want us to keep you safe.”
“You think we don’t understand our parents caring for us? We understand that perfectly. We also understand that we care for our parents and want to help them as quickly as we can. That means having everybody who possibly can help—not leaving the two of us here alone, playing outdated video games.”
“We wouldn’t leave you alone,” Jeff said. “We’d have someone stay here with you, to keep you safe.”
Brewster said, “So that’s three people out of commission, instead of out there helping.”
Jeff said, “The best thing we can do to help your parents is to keep their children safe.”
“Even if it’s against our will?” Mattie asked.
Roy laughed. “Keeping her safe against her will. She really is her father’s daughter, isn’t she?”
Brewster said, “Mattie and I know our parents better than any of you. We know what happened, because we were there, and now we have powers, just like you all do. We’ve gotten things this far. There’s nobody better to help our parents, and you want to put us on the sidelines? We’ve already done so much! Gilbert, Sid, tell them.”
Sid said, “It is unquestionably true. The two of you have done tremendous work in assisting your parents, far more than I could have done at your age.”
“Thank you.”
“And though it pains me to say it, I think these chaps do have a valid point. If you wish to continue assisting your parents, your best course of action would be to stop arguing with the adults and let . . . us . . . get on with—look, please stop glaring at me like that. Back when only the four of us were on the case it made sense to keep you involved, but now we have a lot more people, and there’s no need to risk you two. We’re just trying to do the right thing here.”
Brewster said, “But, you made us almost invincible.”
Gilbert nodded. “Yeah, but almost invincible is another way to say not invincible.”
Mattie asked, “If this is the way you feel about it, why’d you even bother to teach us magic in the first place?”
“So you could protect yourselves if need be,” Sid said. “By that logic, do you expect us to object to a plan to protect you further?”
The wizards decided, over Mattie and Brewster’s constant objections, that they would split up. Roy and Gilbert would search for Phillip at all of his known haunts, across all of the time frames he was known to frequent. Jeff would continue trying to use the file to locate Phillip, and Sid would try to identify and remove the code keeping anyone from teleporting into the kids’ home at the moment that whatever happened, happened. Tyler would take the first shift babysitting the twins.
Mattie and Brewster objected, both to the idea that they needed to be babysat and to the use of the word mishap to describe what happened to their parents, but that did not prevent all of the wizards but Tyler from leaving. In fact, the protests might have accelerated the exodus.
“Okay, kids,” Tyler said in a wrongheaded attempt to win them over. “The N64’s all hooked up. If you need any help getting it running . . .”
His voice trailed off as Brewster stared at him, unmoving. Mattie glanced down at the console sitting on the floor in front of the massive tube TV and said, “It has two buttons. I think we can figure it out.”
Hubert said, “If either of you needs anything, food, drinks, anything at all, I’ll be happy to get it for you.”
“Yes,” Tyler said. “And I’ll be happy to run any food or drinks he gets you through a spell that sterilizes it. Hubert’s actually a pretty good cook, once you render his dishes biologically inert. Anyway, I know you two aren’t happy about this, and I don’t want to make it worse.”
Tyler removed his hat, pulled out a small laptop, and sat down at the dining table. “I’ll be back here getting some work done. If you need anything, just ask. Otherwise, I’ll stay out of your hair.”
Mattie turned on the TV, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and picked up one of the N64’s controllers, puzzling for a moment over which of its three handles she should hold.
Brewster asked Tyler, “What are you working on?”
“I’m writing a novel.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s a really long, complex story. It’d take a while to explain.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Have a seat. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
Brewster silently cursed himself for asking, then pulled up a chair.
* * *
Two hours later, Tyler said, “So you can see how an allegory about the Vietnam War transposed to a fantasy milieu is an idea that’s just full of dramatic possibilities.”
Brewster pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “Uh, yeah, totally. I guess.”
“And I think that making my protagonist one of the gnomes fighting alongside the elves who are helping them defend their home in the southern part of the forest from the gnomes in the north, who are being backed by the dwarves, is a novel touch. That way I can make the point that the whole forest war wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the pixies who invaded years before, then fled, leaving a power vacuum. . .”
Brewster backed away. “Yeah. That sounds really interesting. Especially the part with the giant dragonflies carrying elves away from the pinecone fort at the end. I’m, uh, I’m gonna see what Mattie’s up to.”
“You do that. I really should get to work. The sooner I get writing, the sooner I’ll have a first draft for you to read.”
“Great,” Brewster replied, and nearly ran across the room to where his sister sat on the floor in front of the TV, playing GoldenEye.
