The Seal of Solomon (2 page)

“I'm sure the school would put a stop to this Kropping if you told someone.”

“No, I think it would just get worse.”

He flipped a page of his little notebook.

“Let's talk about your fears, Alfred,” he said.

“How come?”

“Do you have a problem talking about your fears?”

“It's not something I normally talk about.”

“And why is that?” Dr. Benderhall asked.

I thought about it. “It's not something I normally think about.”

He sat there, waiting. I took a deep breath and let it out very slowly.

“Well, clowns for one,” I began. “But almost everybody is afraid of clowns. Heights. Horses. Thunderstorms. Drowning. Being burned alive. Decapitation. Yard gnomes. Cavities. Gingivitis. Insects. Well, not all insects. Ladybugs are okay, and I'd be pretty weird if I was scared of butterflies. Mostly just biting and stinging insects, though I'm not crazy about cockroaches. Not too many people are, I guess, which is why we have so many sprays and exterminators and things like that. Bats. Well, not the fruit eaters. Vampire bats—or any creature with very sharp teeth. That covers everything, sharks and lapdogs and those kinds of things. Those are the big ones, the top fears. Blemishes. Girls. Well, girls might be one of the top ones. Maybe after thunderstorms, but definitely before the yard gnomes. Boredom. See, ever since I came home from England I've been bored out of my mind. Except for that time at the mall last week, when I saw the little man.”

He was staring at me. “Little man?”

“Yeah, this little bald baby-faced guy in a dark suit. I first saw him two tables away at the food court. He was staring at me and when I looked right at him, he looked away real quick. Then I was in Blockbuster and saw him two rows over in the comedy aisle.”

“Do you think he was following you?”

“He didn't look like the kind of guy who would rent comedies, but you can't always judge by appearances.”

He leaned forward in his chair and said, “Okay, let's talk about what's really on your mind.”

I thought about it. “There's nothing really on my mind.”

“Alfred,” he said. “Anything you say in this room stays in this room. I'm not allowed to tell anyone.”

“What if I told you something about a crime?”

“You've committed a crime?”

“Well, I guess technically I did.”

“All right.”

“So say I tell you about that—wouldn't you have to turn me in?”

“Our doctor-patient relationship is sacrosanct, Alfred.”

“What's that—like holy?”

“Something like that.” He was smiling. Dr. Benderhall had large yellow teeth, like somebody who smoked or drank too much coffee. “So—what was this technical crime?”

“I beheaded somebody.”

“Really?”

“And shot somebody.”

“Shot
and
beheaded them?”

“Not the same person. Oh, and I guess I stole a car. Maybe two cars. A cop car and a Jaguar. And the Lamborghini. So I guess that would be three. No, there was the Bentley too. So four cars. You sure you can't repeat any of this?”

He nodded.

“I haven't told anybody since I came home,” I said.

He promised me anything I told him would be held in strictest confidence, so strictly confidentially I told him everything.

Then he promptly sent me into the waiting room and I listened as he picked up the phone and called the social worker assigned to my case. He had left his door open, so I could hear almost every word.

“Clinically depressed,” I heard him say. “Borderline psychotic with delusions of grandeur and paranoid fantasies . . . the death of his mother when he was twelve . . . the murder of his only surviving relative six months ago . . . issues with his father abandoning his mother before he was born . . . Alfred believes he is descended from the knight Sir Lancelot. . . . Yes,
that
Lancelot, and that he was involved with an international spy organization in an operation to rescue Excalibur from what he calls ‘Agents of Darkness.' He also reports encounters with angels, particularly Michael the archangel, whom he believes took the Sword to heaven following Alfred's own death and resurrection as ‘the Master of the Sword.' He also believes the Sword wounded him, endowing his blood with magical healing powers . . .”

Then he said, “Intensive therapy to work out his issues of abandonment, guilt, and betrayal. . . . I'm recommending a CAT scan and an MRI to rule out any physiological abnormality. . . .Yes, such as lesions or tumors. I'd also like to start him on Thorazine, which has been proven effective with paranoid schizophrenia.”

I couldn't believe it. He was telling the social worker
everything
, not five minutes after he promised he wouldn't, and he was a doctor. If I couldn't trust somebody like him, who could I trust? I felt lonelier than ever.

When Betty Tuttle, my foster mom, showed up to drive me home, Dr. Benderhall took her into his office, closed the door, and when she came out thirty minutes later, it looked like he had hit her upside the head with a baseball bat.

“I'm not crazy,” I told her in the car on the drive to the pharmacy to fill the prescription for the crazy drug.

“Oh, no, no,” she said, bobbing her head up and down. “Just a bump in the road, Alfred. Just a bump in the road.”

I overheard the Tuttles arguing late that night. Horace wanted to get rid of me.

“He'll lose it completely one day, Betty,” he said. “Murder us in our beds!”

“The doctor said—”

“I don't care what the doctor said!”

“Maybe it's something simple,” Betty said. “Like a brain tumor.”

“Listen to you: ‘Something simple like a brain tumor'! I say we send him back to Human Services. I didn't sign up to be a foster parent to a lunatic!”

Every day I palmed the pill and slipped it into my pocket. Then, after dinner, I flushed it down the toilet. I thought about that a lot—if I was crazy. If everyone around you thinks you're crazy, does that make you crazy, even though you might not be?

I thought about proving to Dr. Benderhall I wasn't making it up by putting him on the phone with Abigail Smith, the field operative with OIPEP, who had given me her number and told me to call anytime.

And I
did
call her about six months ago, after I got home from England. She asked how school was going and I told her not very good, and she said working for OIPEP was more like a calling than a job. I wasn't sure exactly what she meant by that.

“Normally we won't consider anyone under twenty,” she told me, which made me wonder why she gave me her card in the first place. “And, of course, the training is quite rigorous.”

I guessed she meant I was too young and too out of shape.

“So what should I do?” I asked.

“Alfred, I know it's difficult for you now, trying to return to a normal life after what you've experienced. I told you we were interested in your development and we are. Very much so.” Then she told me to stay in school, work on my grades, and maybe they'd be in touch after I graduated.

I never called back after that and she didn't contact me. I guessed my jet-setting, world-saving days were over, and in a way I was glad and not glad at the same time.

I was wrong about that too.

2

On the way home from school, I saw the bald baby-faced man from the video store again, this time through the back window of the school bus. I always sat in the last row, because if I sat anywhere else I inevitably got popped in the back of the head with a paper wad or spitball. One time somebody even threw their dirty gym shorts at me. I bet that Kropping earned them at least four points.

Mr. Baby-Face was driving a silver Lexus ES, so clean and polished, you could see the sky and clouds and trees reflected in the hood.

After I got off the bus, I waited to see what Mr. Baby-Face would do. He just kept driving; he didn't even glance in my direction.

You're losing it, Kropp
, I told myself. Maybe Dr. Benderhall was right. Maybe I was delusional.

I walked two blocks up Broadway to the Tuttles' house. Neither of them had a job: they were professional foster parents. At any given time there were six or seven kids stuffed into their little old house.

My current roomie was a skinny kid named Kenny, with a face that looked like it had been shoved into a vise and squeezed. His eyes were very close together and sort of crossed, so he always looked angry or confused or both. I didn't know his background but, like most of the Tuttles' foster kids, it couldn't have been very pleasant.

Kenny was a mutterer. He made little noises under his breath and repeated the same words over and over. When I was around, the word was “Kropp,” and he muttered it as he followed me from room to room: “Kropp, Kropp, Kropp, Alfred Kropp, Kropp, Kropp, Kropp.”

It got worse at night. “Kropp, Kropp, Alfred Kropp, it's dark, it's very dark, oh, and I'm thirsty, I'm so thirsty, Kropp, Alfred Kropp, Kropp, Kropp, Kropp.” Most nights he was positive someone evil lurked right outside the window, and he badgered me until I got out of bed to check the latch.

But his jabbering never bothered me much. It was soft and steady, like raindrops against a windowpane, and sometimes it helped me go to sleep.

It bothered some of the other kids in the house, though, and they were pretty rough on Kenny until I took them aside and told them if they didn't stop teasing him, I was going to chop off their heads and stuff their headless corpses into the crawlspace. I wasn't exactly a knight, but I was descended from one, and defending the weak is pretty high on the list of knightly virtues.

I hesitated before going inside. I could hear the TV blaring at full volume through the thin walls, probably one of the soap operas Betty Tuttle was hooked on. Horace was usually sprawled in his La-Z-Boy, shouting over the TV at his wife, “Why do you waste your time with these silly soap operas! Bunch of kooks and nuts getting kidnapped or killed or falling in love with their own brother!” While he watched the whole episode, Betty scrambled around making after-school snacks and folding laundry and picking up toys.

But Horace wasn't in the La-Z-Boy when I came in. He was prancing around the living room wearing an apron and wielding a feather duster, his round face shining with sweat, while Betty worked the corners with a broom. She saw me at the door, gave a little cry, and turned off the TV.

“Dear,” she whispered to Horace, who had stopped prancing and was standing very still, staring at me. “Alfred is home.”

“I know he's home,” he hissed back. “These two things over my nose, they're called ‘eyes,' Betty.”

Then Horace Tuttle came toward me, his short arms flung wide, and I stood there in the entryway, stunned, as he threw those little arms around me. Dust flew from the feathers and I sneezed.

“How ya doin', Al?” he said into my chest. “Good Lord of mercy, you're getting bigger and stronger every day!”

He pulled back, grinning. The smile on his face would give new meaning to the word “creepy.”

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Oh, Alfred, the most extraordinary thing—” Betty began, but Horace cut her off.

“Nothing!” he shouted. He gave an embarrassed little laugh and clapped my shoulder hard. He lowered his voice.

“Just a little spring-cleaning, Ally my boy. Is it all right if I call you ‘Ally'?”

“No,” I said. “And this is October.”

“No time like the present!” Horace bellowed.

Just then Kenny walked into the room, muttering, “Oh, Al. Al Kropp. Alfred Kropp.”

Horace whirled on him and shouted, “Zip your pie-hole, you pea-brained little halfwit!” and Betty murmured, “Horace, you'll give him a complex.” Horace yelled back, “Little late for that!”

“Lay off Kenny,” I said, and that shut Horace up.

“Dear,” Betty said to Horace. “Maybe we should tell Alfred.” She turned to me. “We're having a visitor today.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“No one you know,” Horace said. “Here, Al, let me take that backpack for you . . . Dear God, it's heavy—you're as strong as Paul Bunyan's ox! How about that? You learn about Paul Bunyan in school? Kenny, put this away for Al.”

Horace slung the backpack in Kenny's direction. It slammed into his stomach, and Kenny went down on his butt.

“That's okay,” I said. “I'll take it.”

I grabbed the backpack with one hand, Kenny's arm with the other, and pulled him to his feet.

“Thank you,” he gasped.

The doorbell rang. All the color drained from Horace's face and he whirled on Betty, one of his stubby fingers jabbing at her nose.

“Great, he's here and I haven't dusted the mantel yet!”