Eternity's Edge (4 page)

“I can see that,” Kelly said, squinting. “Barely.”

“Oh, yeah. Forgot about your run-in with the evil eye snatcher.”

“Daryl!” Clara Blue marched up behind her, wagging her finger. “Watch your tongue, young lady. Kelly's vision is not a joking matter.”

“Don't worry about it, Ms. Jackson,” Kelly said. “I've put up with Daryl Red for years. I once broke my wrist in a basketball game, and she accused me of sticking my hand too far in the toilet to get Steven's promise ri—” She jerked her fist up to her mouth and bit it. “I think I'd better shut up for a while.” Without even offering Nathan a glance, she hurried to the computer desk. Daryl followed.

Clara handed Nathan a six-inch-by-six-inch square mirror, now protected by a rubberized frame. “Here's the Quattro mirror. I know you're disappointed about the strange turn of events, but can you get up enough gumption to go to Tony Blue's house?”

Nathan took the mirror and gave her a half-hearted nod. He wanted to stay quiet, but he would have to get over his funk soon. His parents needed him.

Daryl's voice piped up again, this time from the Earth Red observatory above. “We'll watch the fort from here. Keep Nathan Blue's cell phone on, so we can text you if necessary.”

“Oh, yeah.” Nathan leaned toward the desk and scanned its surface. “Where is it?”

Daryl Blue held up the phone and a Nikon on a strap. “Got you covered. And we have the other camera. Let's get moving.”

3
THE MISTY VEIL

 

Clara drove Tony's Camry off the interstate ramp and into Newton, Iowa. A cold, steady drizzle dampened the road, just enough to slicken the pavement and make the tires swish.

As they passed by the local Wal-Mart, Nathan watched an old man with a cane hobble toward a beat-up station wagon, one of the few cars in the parking lot. A scarf wrapped his neck, and gloves covered his hands, but his shivering body showed that his winter garb wasn't quite adequate.

Nathan shivered with the poor old guy. With the heater barely pumping out enough warm air to melt ice, he had to rub his hands together briskly in front of the vent to keep them from stiffening. He might soon have to play the violin, so keeping everything limber was crucial.

He checked on Kelly sitting in the backseat behind Clara. With her oversized sweatshirt now rumpled, she looked bulky as she leaned against the door, her eyes closed and her mouth partially open. She hadn't uttered a word the entire trip. Of course, Daryl's effervescent chatter helped pass the time, but occasional periods of silence allowed Kelly to nod off and then sleep through some of Daryl's stories about their antics in elementary school. Kelly had probably heard them before, so her exhaustion held sway.

Although the bandage was completely hidden, Nathan let his gaze linger on her shoulder. Clara had changed her bandage
again at a rest stop and announced that the stitches had sealed the wound, and the oozing blood had almost stopped. That was good. Kelly had only two bandages left in her bag. Maybe they wouldn't have to change it again.

Images of Kelly's ordeal reentered his mind— Gordon Blue's stabbing dagger, Mictar's blinding grip, and even her potential death — a vision granted by Patar, Mictar's less-malevolent twin, that showed Nathan what would have happened if he had chosen to save his parents. Her scorched face and vacant eye sockets stared up at him from her quivering body, a fatal victim of Mictar's cruel torture.

Nathan clenched his fist and lightly smacked his palm. If only he had another chance at that creep, he would —

“Getting ready for a fight?” Clara asked.

He looked at his fist and loosened his fingers. “I guess so. If Mictar can stretch dimensional wounds and go through them, he could pop into a room when you least expect it.”

“It's probably not so simple. If he were able to come and go as he pleased, we would all have sooty eye sockets by now.”

“Good point.” As they drove between two browning cornfields on the final road leading to the Clarks' Earth Blue home, Nathan scanned the area for any movement. With sleet pellets now mixing with the spattering raindrops in the midst of thickening fog, no one in his right mind would be out in the open air, but this was Mictar they were talking about, so he didn't qualify.

When the Clarks' house came into sight, memories of his first view of the beautiful old mansion came to mind, recalling the morning after he thought his parents had been killed. Clara had driven him here, trying to hide him from the murderers. Tony, his father's college buddy, had agreed to take him in, thus beginning Nathan's adventures with Kelly. Even though the thousand acres of rolling cornfields and the huge shade trees surrounding the house painted a regal landscape, with thoughts
of death and danger creeping in, it seemed more melancholy than majestic.

When they stopped in the driveway, Nathan reached for the door. “Everyone stay here while I check it out.”

“Not on your life,” Clara said as she whipped off her seat belt. “There is safety in numbers.”

Daryl leaned forward. “Yeah, Nathan. This house has ambush written all over it.”

He pulled the mirror from the glove box. “This will let me know if there's any trouble ahead. If everything checks out, I'll give the all-clear signal. No use risking anyone else's life.”

“I'm going!” Kelly yawned and shook her head as if casting off a fog. “You're stuck with me until this is over. Besides, you might need an interpreter.”

Nathan pointed at her. “Okay. Just you. Everyone else stay put. If something happens and we don't come back, go to the observatory. If we're alive, we'll try to contact you there somehow.”

Clara set her finger on the trunk release button. “Do you want your mother's violin?”

“Not yet, but pop it anyway so I can get an umbrella.” Still holding the mirror, Nathan got out and hurried around to the trunk. He grabbed an umbrella and opened it over Kelly's head as she stepped out of the car. Together, they splashed through the driveway's puddles, puffing clouds of white on their way to the front door.

Nathan jiggled the knob. Locked. Kelly dug into her jeans and withdrew a key ring. She chose a short silver key from a collection of four and inserted it into the deadbolt lock. It disengaged easily. And why not? The Clarks' Earth Blue and Earth Red houses were identical, so Kelly Red's key was bound to fit in the lock.

With a turn of the knob and a push on the hardwood panel, Nathan opened the door and leaned inside. As he took a few
skulking steps into the spacious foyer, white vapor continued to stream from his mouth. Obviously the furnace was off.

He flipped the light switch, but the room stayed dim, illuminated only by inadequate daylight coming from a nearby picture window behind a dusty grand piano. They had seen sagging power lines along the way, ice weighing them down and knocking out electricity for every house in the area. No wonder all the roads had been deserted.

The bizarre September weather had probably frozen people's hearts in fear. It seemed that everyone had chosen to hibernate for a while, hoping they would wake up and find everything back to normal. But that wouldn't happen, at least not until they solved the interfinity problem. With Earths Blue and Red getting Earth Yellow's weather, and with Earth Yellow's time racing along at an unpredictable rate, “normal” would have to wait.

Nathan tucked the mirror under his arm and sneaked along the dim hallway, taking one slow step at a time. He shivered in the cold, drafty air. Something felt wrong, terribly wrong — not just the chill, but a sense of danger that seemed to increase with every step.

Ahead on the right lay his bedroom, yet, not really his. It had belonged to his Earth Blue twin, a victim of Mictar's fiery hand. Nathan tried to shake away the memory. The poor guy's face and his burned-out eye sockets had been stamped indelibly in his mind.

He searched for any sign of the murderer. The mental image of Mictar's fiendish eyes, ghostly pale complexion, and slick white hair sent shivers across his skin, especially now that he had watched the monster feed off yet another victim, the unsuspecting nurse back at the hospital. Since the celestial wounds were probably huge in this house, Mictar could easily be lurking nearby.

As he continued his furtive march, Kelly followed a mere
step behind, her rapid breaths the only sound in the hallway. Apparently she also felt the strange sensation, the stillness that belies the brewing storm. As she clutched the back of his sweatshirt, her trembling hand sent another shiver across his skin.

“Are you going to use the mirror?” she whispered.

“In a second.” When they came within a foot or so of the bedroom, he stopped and reached his mirror across the doorway, angling it so he could see inside. So many times before, this mirror had provided a way to escape danger, either by showing him a threat in advance or creating a scenario that saved his skin, such as the time it displayed police officers arresting the gunman on the bridge even as he continued shooting while Nathan and Clara floundered in the Chicago River.

This time, the mirror reflected a thin white mist swirling at the center of the room, a slowly twisting eddy that stretched from the floor to near the ceiling. It looked like a skinny, stationary tornado, yet slower, more mysterious. As it spun, tiny pinpoints of light pulsed on its perimeter, glowing and fading, as if generated by the misty turbine but unable to draw enough energy from the sluggish engine to stay illuminated.

Nathan eased his head toward the opening. Dr. Simon had said that something unusual was going on here, and a swirl of mist hovering over the floor wasn't exactly normal, but with all they had been through, it seemed no more than another oddity in a long string of oddities. Still, Mictar had disappeared in a spinning mist of red. Could this be something similar, a visible manifestation of one of the cosmic wounds?

Tucking his mirror again, he stepped in. A much bigger mirror covered the wall to his left, reflecting his worried face and dampened, wind-tousled hair. This matrix of smaller mirror squares matched the one in his Earth Red bedroom, including the missing square in the lower left-hand corner. So many times before, this mirror had acted in the same way his portable mirror had, showing things that weren't really there and creating
alternate realities that allowed for cross-dimensional transport, at least when accompanied by music and a flash of light. But now it just showed the room and the twisting mist, nothing unexpected.

Behind his image, a queen-size poster bed abutted the opposite wall, and the misty funnel spun near the bed's footboard. The mattress, covered with only a bare white pad, leaned precariously against the wall, its shell torn by a long gash and its inner stuffing scattered across the carpet. The old trunk, the mysterious wooden box that had once hidden treasures in its impenetrable casing, sat against the wall, unopened, as usual.

A frigid breeze blew in through the window at the far side of the room, flapping the drapes and blowing a clump of mattress padding over a toppled desk and lamp that had once stood to the right of the window. Yet, the gusts seemed to have no effect on the funnel. It continued to spin unabated.

“Something weird's going on,” Nathan whispered.

“That's nothing new.” Kelly tugged on his shirt. “Go in farther. I can't see a thing with you blocking the way.”

Now walking on tiptoes, as if to sneak by the swirl without drawing its attention, he crossed the room and closed the window. He rubbed a fingertip across two deep scratches in the painted sash. Could Patar have dug these ruts with his pointed nails? Or Mictar?

Nathan tried to twist the lock into place. The brass piece slipped and fell to the carpet, obviously already broken before he touched it. Forced open, no doubt.

Kelly leaned against the doorjamb, the Nikon camera dangling over her sweatshirt's cardinal logo. She blinked her glassy eyes. “Something's moving.”

Nathan edged closer to the swirl but stayed just outside of its misty funnel. “It's like a little dust devil made out of fog, and it has tiny sparks around it, like miniature fireflies. Seems harmless, but I'm not taking any chances.”

“Better get Daryl in here. She can send a photo back to Earth Red and get Dr. Gordon's opinion.”

“Good thought.” Nathan looked out the window at the Camry. Barely visible through the mist-covered glass, Clara flexed her fingers in front of the air vents. He caught her eye, and she lifted her hands in an “is it okay for us to come in now?” kind of pose.

He pulled Nathan Blue's cell phone from his pocket and punched in Clara's number.

She raised the phone to her ear. “Yes, Nathan.”

“All clear so far. Can you send Daryl in? We need her to transmit a photo. You might as well stay out there. It's freezing in here.”

“Will do. Be careful.”

“Always.” He stuffed the phone back in his pocket and kept his eye on the car. Daryl leaped out and hustled toward the front porch, her eyes darting in every direction. While blowing fog whipped her hair into a frenzy, she puffed short bursts of white into the wind as she rubbed her hands up and down her arms.

Nathan turned back to Kelly. “She's on her way.”

A door slammed. “It's just me!” Daryl called. Light footsteps padded their way down the hall, then her smiling face appeared at the door, eyebrows scrunching down. “What a mess! Either someone had the worst nightmare in history, or the bed frame just vomited the mattress.”

Kelly grimaced. “Thanks for the lovely imagery.”

“No problem.” Pointing at the swirl, Daryl shuffled in. “What's this all about?”

Nathan shrugged. “Can you send a photo? Get Gordon's take?”

“Sure thing.” Daryl lifted her cell phone, pointed it at the funnel, and clicked a button. Then, while her thumbs flew across the keypad, she chattered rapid-fire. “I got a message
from Daryl Red. She says Gordon got another email from Simon Blue. They finished analyzing the Earth Red Nikon. It's like you thought. It has a Quattro lens, and when you pointed it at a Quattro mirror and took a flash picture, you did a
Ghost Busters
no-no.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. Daryl had dropped a cryptic movie reference on them again. “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I give. What's a
Ghost Busters
no-no?”

A satisfied grin spreading across her face, Daryl acted out her explanation, using her cell phone as a ray gun as she rattled off her words. “Egon told Peter not to cross the energy streams with their ghost-capturing guns or all life as they knew it would end. It was sort of the same thing the two Dr. Gordons did when they sent a flash through their observatory mirrors at each other. It created a ginormous dimensional hole that allowed Mictar and Patar to sneak out of who-knows-where and show up in our worlds.”

When Daryl took a breath, Nathan held up his hand. “Give me a minute to think.” He studied the swirl. Could it have materialized because of the recent photo Kelly took at the funeral? Was it some kind of cosmic hole? Could this be the path his parents took to that black vortex he had seen earlier? If so, why was the hole only in this dimension and not on Earth Red? And how could it last so long?

As Kelly drew closer, she kicked aside a pile of mattress padding. Something clinked near her feet. “What was that?”

Stooping, Nathan picked up a short chain. A broken manacle dangled at the end. Where the band was broken, the metal seemed malformed, as if it had been melted. “Dad's chains came off. Maybe a blowtorch?”

“No way,” Kelly said, touching one of the links. “I've watched my father use his. It would've broiled your dad's wrists.”