Duck Boy (21 page)

He was back in the World of Pieces. This time, however, the landscape wasn’t
flat. He found himself in a valley of huge mountains, all dark, like polished
glass. The sky was still filled with that before-dawn kind of light. He looked
around nervously, waiting for the mask to appear.

He let go of the dictionary but continued to grip his Benu stone. With his
free hand he wiggled his hand until he held the handcuffs firmly.

“Lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock.”
The tornado of light surrounded him and in another moment, two tiny clocks
tumbled to the ground, joined by a chain.

He dropped his plaque back into his backpack. The handcuffs—now two small,
tough-looking clocks—glinted on the ground. He couldn’t resist picking them up,
tossing the clocks in his bag, too.

Now, where does a Duck Boy go in this world?

This time the mask didn’t appear; instead it was the face of his Aunt
Shannon. Her face came together with a giant whoosh, ahead of him, blocking his
progress.

“So you returned,” said the face with a snarl, and the voice was Aunt
Shannon’s, too, but the face said words he knew he’d never hear from his aunt.
“You disobedient child. You will listen to me. You gave them your life, Steve.
They own you now. Give yourself up.”

Steve stepped towards the face of Aunt Shannon. “Do not go this way. You are
standing on the rim of the Ocean of Pieces.”

Steve weighed the words of this apparition carefully.

The mask wants me away from the ocean.

Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

Steve fought the urge to leave. To get out. He hated water at the best of
times, but this wasn’t even real water. It was worse.

But the mask. It was hiding something—something lurked behind it. Steve knew
somehow that he had to face whatever was behind the mask. He bowed his head to
summon strength.

Steve looked up and took a step towards the mask. Aunt Shannon’s face
growled and transformed into the face of a wolf and snapped at him.

Steve stepped back to avoid the snap but then pushed himself forward—toward
the face. “You cannot hurt me,” Steve shouted to the wolf image. “You’re a
ghost.” He walked towards the wolf’s snarl and passed right through the face.
The wolf’s face disintegrated and reformed in front of him. Steve realized that
the mask was trying to defend something.

If I walk toward the mask, I’ll find what it’s trying to
keep me away from.

His new plan offered him courage, and he picked up his step. The wolf mask
morphed into a decomposing human skull. He walked through the skull. As he
continued to walk, a host of ghostly images began moving towards him and over him.
The faces of classmates, teachers like Mr. Pollock, his relatives, interspersed
with body parts, horrible scenes, disgusting manifestations, furniture, and
familiar things hurtled at him at incredible speeds. It became difficult to see
as these ghostly images swept past him in a blizzard.

“It’s just a blizzard,” he told himself. Though he didn’t want to, he kept
his eyes open, making sure he faced the onslaught directly.

He walked slowly and occasionally stopped and closed his eyes to shut out
the haunting torrent of images. When he regained his composure and his courage,
he would open his eyes and continue on again.

Suddenly, the ghostly images disappeared. Steve found himself alone,
standing a few feet away from place similar to the scene in his last visit—the Ocean
of Pieces. It looked different this time. Waves broke out in no particular
pattern, like something or someone was swimming in the middle of it. He walked
over to the edge and knelt down, sweeping his hand through what looked like
water. It wasn’t water: it was nothing but a ghostly puddle.

This is the ocean, Steve thought. So what do I do now?

My Benu stone.

He pulled it out of his backpack and held it out towards the Ocean of Pieces.
The plaque shimmered in his hand. Nothing happened. Steve waved it over the
surface of the ocean, being careful not to drop it. Nothing.

Steve replaced his Benu stone in his bag and sat down cross-legged at the
edge to think about what might work, and what this place offered him. He
remembered how he had traveled here, and how the mask had shown him how to
speak a word and the object would appear.

Words… it’s words that make this world work, he thought.
Maybe this is a place of words.

He clutched his Benu stone and spoke to the ocean: “Gold.” He let go of his
Benu stone, let it slide back into the depths of his backpack. What looked like
mist rose from the ocean and traveled over to where he was standing, formed a
cloud and dropped like a rock before him. He bent towards it and his hand
passed through the chunk of gold—it was the spirit of gold.

He thought a bit. And as an experiment, he pulled out his Benu stone again,
held it in one hand, and reached for the gold with the other. He bent forward
and picked up the chunk of gold. This time it looked and felt real enough. He
picked it up and threw it back into the ocean. The gold puffed as it hit the
ocean’s surface and burst into a small cloud of fragments disappearing beneath
the surface. After a little more thought, he came up with his next experiment.

“Aunt Shannon,” Steve yelled at the ocean. Aunt Shannon seemed like the best
choice in the situation. He had no idea what he might expect. From nether
regions of the ocean, mist came together and hundreds of women of all ages
materialized over the water’s surface and began to float toward the shore. They
lined up along the shore in a perfect line.

“Crap!” A brown pile of dog poo appeared on the shore. “Oh!” said Steve with some surprise.

The people weren’t alive. They were just hollow shells—houses without occupants.
Benu stone in hand, he pushed the closest body back into the ocean, and when it
hit the surface it vaporized.The dog poo woofed
into a small cloud and dove back into the ocean.

“Be more specific?” Steve whispered to himself. “Shannon Riley Pankratz,
born 1929 in London, England,” he screamed into the boiling waters. The rest of
the group of women evaporated into mist and retracted into the ocean. A single
form assembled and congealed in front of him. It was his Great Aunt Shannon.

She had a vacant look on her face. Steve inspected her form for damage. Her
body seemed perfectly fine. Like the others, she had no life in her, and as she
stood there he wondered what he needed to do. He reached out to touch his great
aunt, and his hand moved through her arm as if she were a cloud.

“Oh, yeah,” Steve muttered to himself. He stuck his hand into his backpack
and touched his stone. Reached out for Aunt Shannon again, and this time her
arm became flesh. But, her skin was cold and clammy—lifeless.

“Aunt Shannon,” Steve called, addressing the empty body of his great aunt.
The ocean behind her rumbled, as if an earthquake had hit it. Her eyes looked
empty. Aunt Shannon’s body had returned, but her life hadn’t.

“OK,” Steve muttered to himself, “step one worked. What would step two be?”

Steve couldn’t think of how to wake her up. His own Benu stone didn’t seem
to be working. Aunt Shannon’s body stood motionless as Steve tried different
combinations of things to try to wake her up, but nothing worked.

The ocean behind her began to rock frantically, boiling as if something were
about to explode from within its surface. The ground beneath his feet began to
shake as if something huge were about to rise out of the ocean. Steve panicked.
He lost his focus and abandoned the experiment, wondering what might be
happening next.

Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

Aunt Shannon stood motionless and lifeless on the edge of the ocean as it
raged behind her. Fear overcame Steve and he turned from the ocean and began to
run.

Steve ran for cover, but there was nowhere to go. He looked back towards the
ocean. Aunt Shannon’s body stood at attention, alone.

He was thinking about returning to his great aunt’s side when the ocean’s
surface broke open and several items spouted out from within the depths. In a
pang of terror, he plunged his hands into his bag and grabbed his notebook and
the plaque.

Aunt Shannon and the rest of that world flattened into a picture. She looked
lonely as she stood there. The picture shrunk and floated to the floor. He was
at his house again. He ran to a window and searched the front street.

The cops aren’t here. I wonder if the guy is still in the
attic.

As he looked out a window, he noticed that the snowstorm was beginning to
subside. He replaced the plaque and his notebook in the backpack. The interior
house glowed with a sick morning light, reflecting off the snow. But Steve
didn’t notice. Though his winter coat still hung over his shoulders, he felt a
deep frost.

Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

He gasped for air to recapture the breath that fear had squeezed out of him.
The image of Aunt Shannon’s empty body, standing all alone. Another failure.

What a loser. I’m a total wimp.

Depressed, he went to his room quietly and lay down to think. On the verge of
sleep, Steve decided that before he ended up in another difficult situation, he
should record all of his previous experiments. So he sat down and scribbled
them all out quickly, using the frail morning light for illumination.

Once he finished recording his experiments, a sick feeling knotted his gut.
He had left his great aunt in danger and had run for safety. His anger simmered
as he considered how he’d just acted.

I’m tired of being a loser.

His anger with himself pushed the feelings of fatigue and panic outside the
perimeter.

I’m going back to rescue her.

He shoved his hands angrily into his backpack, grabbing the dictionary with
one hand and his plaque with the other. The light enveloped him and whisked him
back to the World of Pieces.

When Steve returned, the landscape was transforming and changing every few
seconds. He watched rolling hills grow and cut into the air as they transformed
into sharp peaks, and then retract to the earth and turn to plains.

“Aunt Shannon,” Steve screamed into the ocean across the landscape. Nothing.
“Shannon Riley Pankratz who was born January 19th, 1929, in London, England.”

Nothing.

Maybe I have to speak into the ocean. How am I going to
find my way back there?

“Mask!” Steve shouted hoping that the mask would reappear in front of him
and lead him to the ocean. This time, nothing—no mask appeared. Steve hoped
that the Ocean of Pieces couldn’t be very far, so he struck in a direction that
seemed right. Wherever he stepped, the shifting landscape became still,
supporting his foot. But shifting shapes prevented him from gaining any sense
of where he was. He walked a fair distance, but there seemed no end to the
landscape; it went on forever. Nothing seemed to be the way it was when he
found Aunt Shannon.

“How could I have been such a wimp?” Steve growled to himself. “I’ll
probably never find her again.” He sat on the ground, drowning in self-pity.

The landscape had the feeling of a shopping mall without the stores. The
waving horizon looked kind of funky. And as long as the mask stayed away, there
weren’t any annoying salespeople, either.

It just needs some Muzak, something to liven up the dead
air in here.

Steve lay on the ground and set his head down on a soft part of the bag. As
he shut his eyes, his mind moved from his surroundings back to his own
troubles.

If I had to live here, it’d be OK. It isn’t ugly, and it
isn’t pretty, kind of like most neighborhoods. I’d just have to get the ground
to stay in one place.

“It’d be OK,” he said aloud. “Not like I’d be missed much.”

Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

As he heard those mocking words echo in his mind, Steve turned his thoughts
in another direction.

I’m still probably the only one who can bring Aunt
Shannon home.

He sat up abruptly.

“Why am I ready to fall asleep here again? When I fell asleep the last time,
I lost my little finger.”

Steve jumped up and snatched his backpack.

This is no time to sleep.

He ambled for several minutes through the shifting landscape when he heard
grumbling and rumbling, like a giant case of indigestion. He listened carefully
to determine where the noise was coming from and turned toward it, walking for
what felt like a half hour without getting any closer. Suddenly the entire
horizon burst into flame.

He jumped back a few feet from the closest flames.

Run, Duck Boy.

There was something not quite right about the fire. For one thing, there was
no smoke and no smell.

Not this time.

Steve forced himself to step closer and closer to the flames. He reached
towards the fire and swept his hand through the flame. There was no heat. He
knelt down and felt the edge of the ground near the base of the flame. The land
dropped away into the fire. “The Ocean of Pieces,” Steve exclaimed.

Time to get to work.

“Shannon Riley Pankratz, born 1929 in London, England,” he yelled into the
fire.

The soldier-like body of Aunt Shannon materialized on the shore of the fiery
ocean in front of him.

“Aunt Shannon,” Steve called. Her eyes refused to jump to life. Holding his
Benu stone, he grabbed one of her hands as it hung limply at her side and shook
it to wake her up. Nothing. She just stared vacantly. Though she still seemed
like just a shell, she was otherwise unhurt. Steve paused for a moment to
think.

“My Benu stone won’t wake her up,” he exclaimed. “But hers might.” He
thought for several moments, recalling as many specific details from Richard’s
life as he could. He remembered Richard’s funeral, so many years ago.