Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2) (5 page)

“Oh, so I get the no-lying, no-denying lecture, and you get to buy time.”

“This isn’t about how we treat Sam. This is about your father, Mr. Logical. Your dad wouldn’t believe in air if he didn’t have to breathe it. How are we going to tell him that he has a son all of a sudden?”

“
We?
No, not we. This one’s on you. I’ll work on the whole progenitor thing and freaks from another realm. That will be a piece of cake compared to convincing Dad that he’s a dad again.”

“I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out.”

“While you’re doing that, you might want to start considering the implications of having a son who can bend people to his will.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for example, in a couple years, I would think he will start dating.”

“So?”

“When you were sixteen, would you want to go on a date with a boy who could make you do anything with a suggestion?”

“Mara, that’s a horrible thing to say.”

“Just trying to get you to understand the implications of interdimensional motherhood, that’s all.”

“In some realm somewhere I’m sure you don’t take such joy in torturing your mother.”

“Unlikely.” Mara smiled.

Merv had a much easier time sliding into the booth across from Prado now that he had the trim frame of the bearded mechanic. Prado’s gaze followed him as Merv settled in, picked up the latex gloves and slipped them over his hands. Neither man spoke. The only sound was the snap of the rubber against Merv’s newly calloused palms. Once gloved, he placed them on the table in front of him. In an unfamiliar deep voice, Merv said, “See what I mean? Morphing like a baby.”

Prado rubbed his chin, appeared to be considering a response, when Linda, the bartender, came over and delivered a mug of beer. “Your buddy take off?” She looked at Prado.

“I’m not sure if he’ll be back.” Prado turned to her, noticed she seemed concerned. “I’ve got the tab.”

“You need another pitcher?” she asked.

“Not right now. I’ll let you know.”

As she turned and walked toward the bar, Prado said, “Explain this to me. Explain it like you and I are from different worlds.”

Merv smiled and bobbed his head like a fat guy, extending his jaw to accommodate jowls that were no longer there. “Whatever you want, man. It’s like this. Normally when babies are born, they are amorphous. They can take the shape of whatever living thing they touch. You follow?”

“So far. Go on.”

“After they grow a little, learn to walk and talk, they imprint, usually on their parents, and the morphing stops. They take on the genetic aspects of one of their parents, usually the mother.”

“This is true of everyone? All babies are born like this?”

“Yeah, gooey little blobs of cells that usually take on Mom’s genome at birth and over a span of time imprint permanently. Mothers generally try to keep their kids away from plants and animals until this happens, but you know kids. They’ll turn into anything they can get their hands on.”

“This doesn’t normally happen to adults?”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“What’s the point of this morphing?”

“In high school biology they say it’s nature’s way of protecting offspring. If a baby gets separated from its parent, it can morph into something else as protection or to assure its survival.”

“Can it stay that way?”

“Theoretically it would be possible for a baby to imprint on a different specifies, but I’ve never heard of it being done, at least not in modern times. It would be kinda hard to tell, wouldn’t it? I mean, if a baby imprinted onto, say, a bear in the woods, it would just be a bear with bear DNA. Who would know?”

“You realize this isn’t normal, this morphing?”

“Yeah, it’s crazy for a grown man.”

“No, I mean babies don’t morph here. You have noticed that things are different since we were in the plane crash, right? Other than your morphing issue.”

“Well, yeah. There’s the dermatology stuff. The wife I never had. You know, when she kissed me at the hospital, I turned into her right there in the emergency room. She fainted on the spot. The place went crazy. Luckily I had cut my arm in the crash, and there was some of my blood on my shirt.”

“Why is that relevant?”

“’Cause how else would I turn back into myself? I had to lick my shirt. When I turned back, my wife fainted again, and the place went crazy again. The doctors and nurses were afraid to touch me, so I got up and walked out. It took me a couple days to figure out where I lived—by then I had morphed into several people and a dog. That reminds me . . .”

Merv dug into his pocket and pulled out a vial, unscrewed the cap and raised it to his lips. His lips thickened, and his face sagged, then expanded and filled out. The beard seemed to draw itself back into its follicles, and his skull shifted and broadened. The cheekbones and jawline sunk into adipose. The ears retracted. His shirt appeared to fill up, and his shoulder rounded. The leatherette-covered bench on which he sat exhaled some air, displaced by this growing girth.

Prado glanced around to see if anyone was watching. He noticed a security camera in the corner of the room pointed in their direction.

“That’s better. That guy had huge feet,” Merv said.

“What’s in that vial?”

“Blood. My blood. In case I have an accident. When that dog jumped on me, I barely had the wits to figure out how to get it out of my pocket. I had to crush the vile with my teeth. Couldn’t twist the cap with just paws.”

“You need to be careful.”

Merv didn’t notice Prado staring at the camera and missed his point. “You’re telling me. If I morph into something like a shrub, I’m not sure what I would do.”

“No, I mean where you do that, who may be watching.” Prado nodded to the camera.

“Oh, I see. I don’t think half those cameras work, and the video on the other half probably never gets looked at.”

“Back to how things seem different since the airliner went into the river.”

“Something changed me, affected me somehow. Maybe it had to do with those blue lights in the plane before it went down.”

“I don’t think only you changed. You said earlier that it seemed like we took off in one world and crashed in another. Based on what you’ve experienced and what I’ve observed, I gather that we all took off from different worlds and landed in this one.”

Merv looked at him blankly. “Different worlds.”

“Yes. I am out of place here too, but babies don’t morph in my world. Although I have noticed some other differences between this place and the world as I have always known it.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not a dermatologist, and I’m not a petty criminal. I don’t know you. And it appears people here bury their dead.
Their bodies rot
. They have these places, these cemeteries, graveyards, all over the place, full of rotting bodies,” Prado said, then his voice dropped an octave, and his lisp grew slightly thicker. “It’s very disconcerting.”

“Now I’m not following you,” Merv said.

“It doesn’t matter. I think it’s clear that we are both in a place where we don’t belong.”

“I guess this means our partnership is over, since you don’t even really know who I am.”

Prado narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions yet. I think I could work with someone having your particular skill set. Since we still need to make a living, it might be advantageous to forge a partnership after all, but it’s not going to be in dermatology.”

Mara steered her Subaru Outback onto the Johnson Creek Road exit off Interstate 205 in southeast Portland, sending a small spray of water that had accumulated on the roadway onto the shoulder. She focused intently on the road, making a show of peering through the downpour, hoping against hope that Sam would take the hint. Turning on the radio, turning up the volume and fiddling with various controls on the dashboard hadn’t done the trick. He continued to ramble on as she turned right onto Eighty-Second Avenue and headed toward the Mason Fix-It Shop on Woodstock Boulevard in southeast Portland where she worked.

“What does he look like?” Sam said, waiting a second and then tapping Mara’s arm. “Hey, are you awake?”

“Huh, who? What does who look like?” she said.

“Our father. My dad. What does he look like?”

“We’ve got some pictures at home. Maybe you could ask Mom to show you this evening.”

“Does he come up here to visit?”

“Not often. I go down to San Francisco occasionally, but he’s very busy with his patients, so it’s complicated to coordinate time together.”

“Does he like basketball? So what’s he like?”

“He’s very, very not, ah, open-minded, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, he’s a heart surgeon, a scientist. He only believes in what he can touch or test or study in a lab. There’s no way we are going to get him to believe in metaphysics or sentience or any of the other stuff we’ve been dealing with these last few weeks.”

“So what does that mean? What are you trying to say?”

She opened her mouth, thought better of what she was about to say, then said, “I’m not trying to say anything. I think you should discuss it with Mom. She’ll know how to best handle things with Dad.”

“Well, he’s got to think it’s cool to have a son. I mean, what man doesn’t want to have a son? Not that there’s anything wrong with daughters—it’s just, you know, different.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be different all right,” Mara said, flipping the turn signal and taking a left onto Woodstock Boulevard. “Look, I’m going to pull up to the curb and drop you off in front of the bakery. I’ve got to pick up some parts before I go into the shop. Ask Ping if he can stop by and see me later today. I’d like to have a little chat with him. Can you do that?”

“Sure. Ping’s gonna freak when I tell him I have a dad.”

“We’re all freakin’ a little bit about that,” Mara said as she pulled over and popped the lock on Sam’s door. “Okay, make a dash for it.” She nodded through the rain toward the green awning under the lit Ping’s Bakery sign, a shiny, bright beacon on a block of worn storefronts, including the Mason Fix-It Shop where Mara worked.

* * *

A strong spicy-sweet aroma hit Sam the minute he flung himself through the front door of Ping’s Bakery. While clearly open for business, the front portion of the bakery was deserted. No customers sat at the little round tables or stood in front of the register above the glass display case filled with cakes and pastries. The swinging doors leading back into the kitchen swayed ever-so-slightly. Ping must have walked in there for something.

“Hey, Ping!” Sam shouted as he shook himself off over the large Welcome mat in front of the door. “Did you know I have a father?”

Clad in white pants, a T-shirt and apron, Ping pushed open the swinging doors with a hip while holding a couple pies. “What’s that you say?” he said, quickly setting the pie plates on the counter. He flapped his hands in the air. “Hot!”

“I have a dad who lives in San Francisco, and he’s a heart surgeon. Isn’t that cool? I can’t wait to meet him.”

“Hmm, I guess it didn’t occur to me to ask about your father. Mara never mentioned him, but it’s not like we’ve had a lot of time to discuss it. Did you have a father when you lived in your own realm?”

“No. Diana, my mom there, would never talk about him. I’ve always suspected she did something to him. You know, like fed him to one of her lizards or something.”

Ping slipped off his quilted mitts and placed them next to the pies on the counter. “You know, Sam, this might be a little complicated, explaining where you came from. You’ve been lucky so far that your mother, your mother here in this realm, has such an open mind about metaphysical matters. Your father might be a completely different story.”

“I wish everyone would quit saying stuff like that. I would really like to meet him. What’s wrong with that?”

Ping walked around the counter and wiped his hands on the apron that strained against his ample midsection. “Come have a seat.” He pulled out a chair and sat down at the closest table.

Sam flopped into a chair. “We’re going to have one of our talks, aren’t we?”

“We’ve only known each other for about two months. I hadn’t realized we had established a pattern already.”

“Yeah, there’s a pattern.”

“Anyway it’s not really any of my business to get involved with your family life, but I don’t want to see you get hurt. So I’ll say what I have to say, and then we’ll get back to work. Okay?”

“Fine.”

“As we have discussed before, the people in this realm don’t seem to be aware of the true nature of reality. They don’t know that they exist in other realms as well as this one, that they have lives and experiences beyond what they perceive here.”

“I know, but once we explain it to him, he’ll know I’m his son, right? I mean, Mom figured it out all on her own even though her body was taken over by her counterpart. Dad can figure it out too, right?”

“I don’t know, Sam. We don’t even know if he would be open to such concepts, not to mention the shock of having a son who he didn’t know about. That has profound emotional implications for a man, even without all the metaphysical issues your presence here raises.”

“What are you saying? That I can never meet my own father?”

“No, but it might take some time. Your mother is still getting used to having a son, and now she has to figure out how to tell her ex-husband about you. That’s very complicated. You may need to be patient. I would follow your mother’s guidance about this. Don’t push too hard, or you might get hurt.”

“Oh, okay, but I don’t think it’s fair that Mara gets to have a father, and I don’t. I mean, I think my dad would like me, don’t you?”

“Any man would be proud to have you as a son, Sam. I think getting him to
believe
that he has a son is a completely different matter. Since your mom knows him best—”

Ping’s eyes widened, and his body tensed. He grabbed the edge of the table, and his body shook, causing the legs of the table to clatter against the floor. His face reddened and bulged as he tried to stand up, knocking over his chair.