Halifax Page 13

  Bobby stood back. He was now a little frightened and probably sorry he had asked. His eyes grew wider as Izzy’s cries grew louder and he couldn’t help himself but to reach out to comfort her when she suddenly stood straight up and socked him hard in the arm.

  “I’m not wearing a screen, moron!” she said, looking exactly the same as she had moments before. Same old Izzy. “This is what I look like. All aliens don’t look like…aliens. Most are actually really beautiful. Remember, to the rest of the universe, you’re the aliens.”

  Izzy headed off down the sidewalk again, leaving a slightly stunned Bobby behind her. He took a moment to compose himself then rushed to catch up with her, trying hard to act like he wasn’t fazed at all by what she had just done and that he knew what she looked like all along.

  Then he dropped a little surprise of his own. “My dad was abducted by aliens.”

  Izzy almost choked on her liquorice. She had to cough to clear her throat.

  “When I was ten,” Bobby continued. “He walked out the door one day and didn’t come back. Never saw him again.”

  “And you think he was abducted by aliens?” Izzy asked. “It takes a lot of effort to travel through space. Believe it or not aliens have better things to do than kidnap earthlings and mutilate cows.”

  “It’s okay. I know what I know. I don’t care if you think I’m crazy.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” Izzy said reassuringly. “Creepy, yes. Crazy? No.”

  * * *

  Nora arrived at the Halloween Carnival without a costume and without enthusiasm. As she had for most of her life, she was playing a role, looking too cool to be concerned about anything other than her hair, her nails, and the boyfriend she was supposed to meet.

  Suddenly Shana Rowen jumped out in front of her from the doorway of one of the shops. Nora screamed and stumbled backwards.

  “Hey, it’s just me,” Shana said, confused at her fellow cheerleader’s intense reaction. Shana was normal now, or as normal as she may have ever been. She still possessed the unnatural enthusiasm inherent to head cheerleaders countrywide.

  “Sorry. You surprised me,” said Nora.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Shana asked.

  “I’m meeting Andre at the haunted house.”

  “Oh, An-d-re,” said Shana, stretching his name out into about fifty syllables. “He’s been so weird lately. In fact everyone’s been weird lately. You have no idea how many random students have come up to me asking if they can be cheerleaders. I think we went way overboard with our Outreach Program. It just encourages false hope.”

  Nora looked down the sidewalk where the shops of Main Street petered out and the houses began and saw Andre standing, arms crossed, impatiently waiting for her. He was wearing his satin Lexham basketball jacket embroidered with his name on it and looked every inch the BMOC he was.

  “There’s Andre,” Nora said, standing a few feet apart from Shana, still nervous to be in her presence despite the fact that the girl was no longer the host of the Cambian virus. Nora would never look at Shana the same way again. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  Nora hurried away from Shana, but she wasn’t exactly rushing to get to Andre. The look on his face said it all. He wasn’t happy and that meant he wasn’t going to let her be happy. She greeted him with a kiss that was not reciprocated.

  “You’re late,” Andre said sternly.

  “Sorry.”

  “Were you with your new friends? Were you with Farrell Halifax?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Come on, let’s go to the haunted house,” Andre said as he led her a few houses down the street.

  “Do we really have to?” Nora asked. “You know I hate stuff like that.”

  “I think tonight we’re going to do what I want to do,” Andre said as they stopped in front of the haunted house.

  It was a large Victorian house with a wide and crumbling wrap-around porch. A cupola rose from the second story and the rusty rooster weather vane atop it creaked as it turned in the breeze. What was left of the mildew colored green paint on the house was peeling away and broken shutters hung cockeyed from the sides of blackened windows. The house looked as if it should have been condemned. Which was the entire point of a haunted house, of course.

  As Nora and Andre walked up the broken and uneven front steps, a group of teenagers came running out the front door of the house. They were laughing nervously in that way you laugh when you’re scared of something that shouldn’t have scared you.

  Nora stuck close to Andre as they reached the imposing oak front door. It immediately opened with a loud creak and an old man stepped out onto the porch to greet them. He wore a hooded robe that brushed the floor as he walked. His wrinkled hand reached out towards them and his long fingers beckoned them inside.

  “Come in, come in,” the old man said in a raspy voice. He took two tickets from Andre and held the door as the young couple entered the dark house. He then closed the door behind them and remaining on the porch.

  Two teenage boys dressed as zombies, with tattered clothing and kohl black eyes, came up the steps and presented their tickets to the old man.

  “We’re closed,” the man told them. “Technical difficulties.”

  As the disappointed teenagers left, the old man pulled a skeleton key from his robes --- and locked the front door.

  * * *

  Images of aliens and cheerleaders and mathematical equations flashed across the huge screens of the Garage. Holograms of planets hung in the air, computers churned away, lights blinked like Christmas tree bulbs across consoles and all manner of equipment churned and grinded and rattled the room around Farrell. He sat in the middle of it all, looking from screen to screen, studying everything, searching for patterns or clues or answers, totally lost in concentration.

  Farrell held Rom’s Rubik’s Cube in his hand, turning it absent-mindedly, causing the screens to flick from one image to another. The largest of the screens was tuned to the satellite television feed and cable channels came into focus on the screen, from a Home Cooking show to a Western to a Sci-Fi movie, each appearing for a moment then dissolving in pixilated fuzz as Farrell twisted another section of the cube.

  Rom entered the Garage, still in his bird attack costume, still dejected and dragging his empty trick-or-treating bag behind him. Rom stopped and looked at all the activity and at Farrell, who didn’t even look up to acknowledge Rom’s presence. The young boy pulled the Rubik’s Cube out of Farrell’s hands and in seconds maneuvered its slices to solve the puzzle in record time, each side a solid color.

  The large screen came into focus and Sports Center appeared on it. The ESPN feed from the satellite was back and all was right in the world again.

  Rom sat in a chair next to Farrell at Rom’s own workstation. Toys of every sort, or modified toys, were strewn across the table in front of them. Farrell still didn’t look at Rom. He was lost in his own thoughts. Rom sighed loudly.

  “My first chance to go trick-or-treating and nobody will take me. Nobody,” Rom said, laying his arms across the table and resting his head down, hoping Farrell would notice him. “Izzy doesn’t care about me and Bobby is not the brother I thought he was going to be. And no one is nice to me at school. Especially cranky old Mrs. O’Brien, who is completely going to outlive me, and all those girls who look at me like I’m some kind of alien. Which, of course, I am.”

  Farrell ignored Rom and instead began poking at Rom’s tinker toy force field with the plate of cookies beneath it. He examined it closely.

  “I don’t like it here,” Rom continued. “And I especially don’t like the fact that no one cares what I think…or even listens to me!”

  Rom’s complaining had no effect on Farrell. He continued to look at the force field. He prodded it with the end of a pencil and watched as sparks crackled across its surface.

  Rom angrily pushed a blinking blue button on the workstation and deactivated the force field. A beam of light lowe
red around the tinker toys and he reached in and grabbed one of the peanut butter cookies held within. He took a bite of one, crumbs falling on the lapels of his suit, and stared at Farrell, desperate to get his brother’s attention, but still Farrell ignored him.

  * * *

  A beautiful girl with long black hair sauntered down the sidewalk, her hips swinging back and forth as she teetered on four-inch high, strappy black heels that matched the very short and very sexy black cat costume she was wearing --- or barely wearing. A cute cat’s tail bobbed up and down as she walked, beckoning Bobby to look, whether he wanted to or not. But he wanted to look. He really did. He smiled in appreciation at the girl’s many attributes as she walked by at a seductively slow pace.

  “Hey, Logan,” Izzy said to the girl. “Make sure you reactivate your screen tomorrow. You can’t walk around looking like that.”

  Bobby turned and watched the sexy girl sashay off, looking at her in a whole new way now. “Alien? Can’t be.”

  “Totally,” Izzy said. “And he can be a real problem.”

  Bobby shook off the thoughts he was having about Catgirl and inched a little closer to Izzy as they walked. “So tell me about you. I assume you could be living a nice life on some other planet some place with your handsome two headed alien boyfriend or something. Why do you do this?”

  “Because I saw what happened to our planet and I don’t want that to happen to your planet. And because I owe Farrell. He sort of…saved me.”

  “From what?” Bobby asked. “Jail? You were one of these prisoners?”

  Izzy stopped walking and looked down at the sidewalk for a long moment, scraping her boots back and forth along the pavement. She finally looked up and moved her hair out of her eyes, looking at Bobby straight on, a shy person gaining courage. “You know how I said I was sensitive? I mean, I’m really sensitive. Like cosmically sensitive. And where I come from that’s a very bad thing. People like me were considered…crazy. I was in what you might call an insane asylum. Farrell got me out. Being sensitive is actually useful for what we do here. So see? I know you’re not crazy. Because I know crazy.”

  Bobby was uncharacteristically speechless. Whatever mushy soft interior he had hidden deep inside his soul was somehow touched by Izzy’s vulnerability. A hairline fracture had appeared across his tough veneer. It looked like he was going to reach out to Izzy, to hold her and comfort her. His hand slowly moved towards Izzy’s face as his own face softened. Izzy softened, too. She could feel his empathy. It was soothing and unexpected, but entirely welcome. In a split second, though, it was gone.

  Bobby suddenly pointed to a small boy wearing a skeleton mask. He was being accosted by a big eyed, pointy headed, green alien, straight out of Close Encounters. The alien grabbed the bag of candy the child had been clutching, snatching it out of his little hands, and ran off through the surrounding front yards, leaving the crying boy behind.

  “Alien crime!” Bobby shouted. “Right there! Right in front of us! I’m on it!” Bobby shot off after the escaping alien, tearing across a well-manicured lawn and leaping over a small white, picket fence before Izzy could stop him.

  “No, Bobby! Wait!” she yelled after him before realizing she was going to have to follow. She ran to catch up. The crying crime victim followed behind her as fast as he could.

  * * *

  Nora stood back for a moment and let Andre take the lead into the foyer of the haunted house. Appropriately scary music, complete with mournful moans, played over hidden speakers. The requisite plastic spiders hung from the ceiling and lights flickered on and off. As with most haunted houses, it wasn’t about what you could see. It was about what you couldn’t see. It was what might jump out at you at any moment, sending your heart rate soaring. It was the thrill factor.

  “Can’t we do something else?” Nora asked as she stepped gingerly forward, following Andre. “I don’t want to be here.”

  “Maybe you should do something because I want to do it,” Andre said without looking at her. “That’s not much to ask.”

  That quieted Nora down. It wasn’t worth arguing. It was better to just get it over with, to weather the haunted house and weather the storm that was Andre’s bad mood.

  Nora turned and looked into a mirror along the wall. It was a trick mirror and as she stood before it her reflection began to age. Crow’s feet formed around her eyes and wrinkles appeared across her forehead. Her shiny blonde hair turned to grey and her lips thinned and drooped. Nora stared into the mirror, feeling her face, running her fingers along her smooth skin, but seeing an old woman in the reflection.

  “Come on,” Andre said, startling Nora. She looked back in the mirror and her image returned to normal. She was young again though never in her life had she ever had the opportunity to be youthful. She was like a dutiful wife to her boorish boyfriend. She was a mother to her mother. She was sixteen going on sixty.

  * * *

  “How about just one hour,” Rom pleaded with Farrell as he paced in circles around him in the Garage. “One hour of trick-or-treating? I’ll even split the candy with you. Thirty minutes? One street. Come on, Farrell. What kind of older brother are you?”

  “I’m not your brother, Rom.” Farrell finally spoke but he didn’t seem to paying any more attention to Rom. “I’m here to save you.”

  “Save me from what?” asked Rom.

  “No, not save you,” Farrell told him. “That’s not what I said.”

  “That is what you said.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s what the Cambian said,” Farrell pointed out. He began pushing a series of buttons all around him and typing into the keyboard on the control panel. One by one he and Rom watched as every screen filled with the same image --- Nora’s class picture. Her smiling face surrounded them. It even floated as a hologram in front of Farrell. He spun around in his chair taking in Nora’s image as if he were seeing it for the first time.

  “When will she die, Rom?” Farrell demanded to know.

  “Nora?”

  “No, your math teacher.”

  “I didn’t think you were listening to me.”

  “I’m always listening, Rom. You said she was going to outlive you. Either her death date changed or yours did.”

  Rom thought for a moment and quickly calculated in his head. “It is strange, but her death date changed. Just randomly. She’s now going to die in sixteen minutes, six hours, four days, two months…and three hundred years.”

  “Rom…” Farrell said, encouraging him to put the pieces together.

  “Oh!” Rom exclaimed, finally realizing what Farrell already knew. “And I thought I was the smart one.”

  Farrell leapt up out of his chair, full of energy and ready for battle. “No Rom, when will you learn? I’m the smart one. The Cambian didn’t want to turn everyone in the world into cheerleaders. It was using those cheerleaders as a force field.”

  “From us?” Rom asked.

  “It wasn’t about something getting in,” Farrell continued excitedly. “It was about something getting out. Call Izzy and Bobby. Tell them we’ll meet them at the Halloween Carnival.”

  Farrell grabbed the keys to the Citroen and headed for the car parked on the lift in the center of the Garage. Rom followed behind, trying to catch up with Farrell both physically and mentally.

  “Shouldn’t we be going to the school?” asked Rom.

  “It’s not about the school, Rom. It’s about what’s sometimes at the school. The other night the Cambian wasn’t running away from something. It was running after something.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Andre took Nora by the hand and led her into the haunted house’s parlor. It was decorated formally with old-fashioned, turn-of-the-century furnishings. Paintings of stern looking figures, formal and frowning, stared down from the walls. Nora looked at the dusty pink sofas with their perfectly placed cushions. They were inviting, as if she had just walked into the house of a kindly grandmother. There didn’t seem to be anything frighteni
ng in the room at all. Which made it all the more frightening to be in.

  Suddenly the room was plunged into darkness, every light extinguishing. It was completely black. Andre pulled his hand from Nora’s and she could no longer feel him. Her heartbeat quickened as she tried to focus on something, anything, but couldn’t see at all.

  “Andre?” she asked as she felt around, grasping at air. “Andre, where are you?”

  A ghostly figure appeared before Nora, causing her to yell out in surprise. It was a woman dressed in a flowing white dress and she floated in front of Nora, looking at her, reaching out to her. Then she disappeared.

  As quickly as the first ghost disappeared, another one appeared behind Nora. She looked over her shoulder to find the figure of a man hovering a foot above the floor, his face contorted in agony. She could see him and see right through him. She reached out to touch him, but didn’t feel anything. Her hand cut right through the man. He was a projection.

  The projection of the man reached out towards Nora and she jumped back when she could feel his hand on her. After a moment she realized it wasn’t the hand of a special effects ghost she was feeling on her. It was Andre’s hand. He grabbed her and jerked her around.

  “I want you,” he said as ghostly figures began to swirl around the room, racing along the walls at a faster and faster pace.

  “What do you mean?” Nora asked. She searched Andre’s expressionless face, illuminated by the ghostly projections, for any clue as to his mood.

  “I want you,” he said, pulling her closer. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why I came here…”

  Andre leaned in and began kissing Nora. His hands began moving across her body.

  “What are you doing?” she protested, pushing him away.