Keeper of Dreams (24 page)

“Your brother kept putting things through the worm,” said the elf. “I’d find them in my garden. Wooden blocks. Socks. Underwear. A baseball cap. Little model cars. Plastic soldiers. A coat hanger. Money. And once a huge, misty, terrified cat.”

Todd thought back to all the times things had disappeared. His
favorite plastic soldiers. His baseball cap. His socks. His underwear. His Hot Wheels cars. Jared must have been stealing them to make them disappear down the wormhole. He had no idea where Jared got the cat, but it would have been just like him.

Of course, maybe Jared thought he was
feeding
the monster in the closet. Placating it, so it wouldn’t come out of the closet and eat him. Was this how the worship of idols began? You put things in a certain place and they disappear into thin air—what could you imagine, except it was a hungry god?

And the kid was smart enough to figure out that if he needed to make stuff disappear, it might as well be something of Todd’s. Amoral little dork.

“The first time I saw something appear in midair,” said the elf, “it was broad daylight. I knew what it was—I’d been investigating worms for some time. It was a . . . hobby of mine. But I also knew that if people found out I had one in our neighborhood, I’d either be inundated with curiosity seekers, or plagued by pious people determined to sit around and see what the gods would give them, or I’d be arrested for witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft? That’s just superstition.”

“Don’t get superior with me. I’ve been studying your culture for years. On television you marry witches, but in real life you burn them. And if somebody in your world saw
me
plop out of the sky . . .”

“Which I just did.”

“. . . then what do you think would happen
here
?”

“Scientists would come and study the worm and—”

“You really are naive. No self-respecting scientist would come anywhere near something like this, because it would sound like pure tabloid journalism. They could lose their careers!”

“Is that what happened to you?” asked Todd. “Have you lost your career?”

“I don’t have a career, exactly.”

“You’re not a scientist?”

“In our world, scientists are rare and they work alone.”

Todd gave that the worst possible spin. “People think you’re crazy and pay no attention to you.”

“They’d think I was crazy and pay a
lot
of attention to me if I hadn’t moved the anus.”

It occurred to Todd that “moving the anus” could be rendered as “hauling ass,” which he found amusing.

“Now look who’s laughing,” said the elf.

Todd got back to business. “You can
move
this thing.”

“With enormous difficulty and great risk.”

“So you could move it out of our closet. You didn’t have to put it there!”

“I didn’t put it in your closet. I moved it a hundred yards to a dense woods behind my house. I had no idea where it would go in
your
world. It moved a thousand miles. I couldn’t plan its location here, and I’m not going to change it now. It happens to be well-hidden and convenient to a town with a decent library. It’s perfect.”

“Perfect for you. Really lousy for my mother and our whole family.”

“I told you, that was not my fault.” The elf sounded bored, which made Todd mad.

“Listen, you little runt, you get my mother back and then you get your worm out of our house and out of my yard!”

The elf was just as furious. “Listen yourself, you bug of a boy, don’t give orders to a ‘runt’ who happens to be dense enough that I could reach into your chest with my bare hand and pull out your beating heart and stuff it into the worm’s anus! You have ‘suppository’ written all over you.”

There was a moment of silence while Todd realized that the elf was right. There was nothing Todd could do to threaten him; so it did no good to get angry or make demands. If he was going to get any help from the elf, he’d have to keep the conversation calm. So he said the first nonthreatening thing he could think of. “That’s like what they did in
Temple of Doom
.”

Exasperated, the elf said, “
What
is what
who
did? And where is the temple of doom?”

“It’s a movie. An Indiana Jones movie. They pulled the beating heart out of their sacrificial victims.”

“I don’t have time to go to movies,” said the elf. “I don’t have time to talk to ignorant, pugnacious boys.”

“What does pugnacious even mean?”

“It means that I apparently have become much more fluent in your ridiculously misspelled and underinflected language than you will ever be.”

“Well, you’re a scientist and I’m not.” And then something else
dawned on Todd. If the worm had been attracted to Todd, then it must also have been attracted to this guy and for maybe the same reason. “You’re a space traveler.”

“No I’m not.”

“You travel between worlds.”

“But not through space. My world doesn’t exist in your space. No light from our sun can ever possibly reach this planet. You cannot board any kind of imaginable spacecraft and get from there to here no matter how long you flew. I am not a space traveler.”

“You get from one planet to another. And you didn’t have to build anything or get good grades in any subject or anything at all. It was just dumb luck, but you got to visit an alien world!”

“From your tone of voice, I suspect you’re about to say, ‘No fair!’ ”

“Well, why should
you
get to do it, and I can’t!”

“Oh, you can—if you’re stupid enough to reach into the throat of the worm and get sucked through and pooped out into a world where you’re like a kind of atmospheric diarrhea.”

“So what does that make you, interplanetary constipation or something?”

“It makes me sick of talking to you. I’ve got work to accomplish.” The elf started walking away.

“Hey!” called Todd.

The elf didn’t pause.

“What’s your name!” Todd yelled.

The elf turned around. “You don’t need my name!”

Why not? Did it give Todd some kind of magical power? Todd remembered a fairy tale about secret names that his mother used to read to them. “Then I’ll call you Rumpelstiltskin!”

To his surprise, the elf came back, looking very angry. “What did you call me?”

“Rumpelstiltskin?” said Todd, remembering the heart-grabbing threat.

“Don’t you ever call me that again.”

Which almost made Todd call him that twenty times in a row. But no, he had to have this guy’s cooperation if he was going to get his mother back. “Then tell me your name.”

The elf stood there, irritably considering. “Eggo,” he finally said.

Of all things. “Like the waffles?”

“Like
me
. My
name
is Eggo. And yes, your mother already explained about frozen toaster waffles. In my language it doesn’t mean anything of the kind.”

“What
does
it mean?”

“It means me, I told you! Just like Todd means you. It’s a name, not a word.”

The elf—Eggo—turned around and headed out across the back yard. Todd almost laughed, his gait was so ducklike as he swung those big shoes around each other so he didn’t trip on his own feet. But it wasn’t funny. Eggo was doing what he had to in order not to sink into the earth; what was Mother doing, to keep from dissolving into mist on the other side?

Todd went back into the house, determined to do something. He didn’t know what, yet, but he had to act, stir things up, change things so that somehow Mom would come back and life would get back to normal. Or maybe it would get even worse, maybe people would die, but isn’t that what they already believed happened to Mom? They’d already been through a death and now there was a chance to undo it.

And Todd knew that it was going to be him who did the undoing. Not because he was the smartest or strongest one in the family but because he had decided to. Because he was going to go through the worm and get Mom home. He was going to travel to another world. It’s what he was born for.

He couldn’t say that to anybody or they’d think he was crazy.

Not like seeing elves materialize in the back yard . . .

Dad was still asleep, as usual on a Saturday morning. Jared was up, but he hadn’t left his room yet. Todd went in and sat beside the little sorted-out piles of Legos that Jared was drawing from to build his . . . what?

“It’s like an amusement park ride,” said Jared.

“It looks like a skyscraper.”

“I put little Lego guys into this hole at the top and they bounce around inside and pop out here.”

“That’s not an amusement park, it’s a machine for killing people.”

“It’s not for killing people,” Jared said vehemently—but quietly, so Dad
wouldn’t wake up. “People are perfectly OK when they come through the other side. They are
alive
.”

He’s building the stupid worm, thought Todd. “You’re right,” said Todd. “They’re perfectly all right when they come out the other end.”

Jared looked up at him suspiciously.

“I met your elf,” said Todd.

“There’s no elf,” said Jared.

“All my stuff you put through the mouth in the closet,” said Todd. “By the way, thanks for stealing my Hot Wheels and all my other crap.”

“I didn’t steal anything.”

“Mother’s alive,” said Todd. “I know it now.”

But Jared didn’t look relieved or happy or anything. In fact, he looked panicky. Only when Todd felt a strong hand on his shoulder did he realize that Dad must have come into the room and heard him.

Dad had never handled Todd roughly before, not like this. The grip on his shoulder was harsh—it hurt. And he dragged Todd so quickly out of the room that he could barely keep his feet under him. “Hey!” Todd yelled. “Hey, hey, what’re you—”

But by then they were in Dad’s room and the door slammed shut behind them. “What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?” said Dad. He practically threw Todd onto the bed. Then he leaned over him, one hand on either side of him, his face angry and only about a foot away from Todd’s. “Do you think it’s funny to try to make your brother believe that all his childhood fantasies are true?”

“Dad,” said Todd.

“It’s all a joke to you, is that it?” Dad said, his voice a harsh whisper. “All that I’ve done, trying to make life normal again, you think it’s really clever to undo it and make your brother think that your mother is still alive somewhere. Do you know what that would mean? That your mother
wants
to be away from us, that she
chose
to leave us like that. You think that’s
better
than believing she’s dead? Well you’re wrong.”

“It’s not about believing anything,” said Todd quietly, reasonably, trying to calm Father down.

And it worked, at least a little. Dad stopped looming over him and sat on the bed beside him. “What is it, then, Todd? Why are you telling your brother that he should believe his mother is alive?”

“Because she is, Dad,” said Todd.

Dad turned away from him, slumped over, leaning on his knees. “It never ends.”

“Dad,” said Todd, “I didn’t believe it, either. I thought she was dead until this very exact morning when I found out the truth. Something I saw with my own eyes. Dad, I’m not crazy and I’m not joking.”

Dad was now leaning his forehead on his hands. “What do you think crazy people say, Todd?”

“They say there’s a worm that passes between two worlds, and the mouth of it is in Jared’s closet and it sucks things out of our world and drops them into another. And Mother’s there, only she can’t get back because the rules of physics are different in that place, and she’s not as dense as we are here, so she can’t hold on to things and she doesn’t know how to find the mouth on the other side and the jerk who’s studying the thing, the guy who moved the mouth of the worm into Jared’s closet, he doesn’t care about anything except his stupid science. And I can’t go there myself and get Mom back if you don’t help.”

By the time Todd was through, Dad had sat up and was staring at him. “Yes, Todd,” he finally said. “That’s exactly what crazy people say.”

“But I can prove it,” said Todd.

Dad buried his face in his hands again. “God help us,” he murmured.

“Dad, what if there’s one chance in a million that I’m not crazy. Do you love me enough to give me that chance? Will you come and
look
?”

Dad nodded behind his hands. “Yeah, I’ll look.” He stood up. “Show me whatever you’ve got to show me, Todd.”

Todd knew perfectly well that Dad still thought he was crazy. But he was at least willing to give him a chance. So Todd led the way back into Jared’s room.

Jared was sitting on his bed, pressed into the corner of the room, holding a little Lego guy in one hand and gnawing on a finger. Not the nail, the whole finger in his mouth, chewing on it like it was gum.

“Get your hand out of your mouth, Jared, and come over here and help me,” said Todd.

Jared didn’t move.