Wuftoom (12 page)

E
VAN SMASHED INTO THE WATER.
His whole body gasped, and he splashed himself to standing.

Ylander and Suzie plopped easily into the water behind him. They joined Tret in grinning at him. The membrane on their bald heads rippled.

“What are we doing?” Evan gasped.

“We're going to recover the proem,” said Tret. “Come on, we have to get out of here before they notice we're gone and come after us.”

“Everyone was looking at me,” said Evan, letting the last of the water roll off him.

“All the more reason to move quickly,” said Tret, and he wrapped an arm around Evan's back and pushed him forward. “We're supposed to blindfold you, but I think you've been through enough for one night.”

Evan stiffened. He felt like his insides were shifting around.

Tret clapped him on the back. “No one's going to do that again. Not if we're with you.”

Tret's smile was genuine and his voice was warm. But his face was still Wuftoom. A shriveled hole for a mouth. Sunken white eyes. Evan looked down. As they started moving, Evan's own new face stared blurrily at him from the water.
That is not my face.
He felt himself starting to shake.
Focus on the way,
he thought. He tried to concentrate without showing what he was doing. But he felt sick.

“We've set up in a basement with a big drainpipe,” Tret said, “for flooding. The house is abandoned. It's all boarded up. We saw a homeless man there once, but we shooed him off by growling.” Tret, Suzie, and Ylander all laughed. “We'll get your friend down there and lock him in until he changes,” Tret finished.

“But how are you going to get him down there?”

“That's where you come in, new one! We got the phone working. You'll call him.” It sounded so simple.

“I don't know if he'll even remember me,” Evan protested. “We weren't friends, and my voice has changed.” But he'd done the worst to Jordan already. Being locked in a basement might be better than having to change in front of his parents. His parents wouldn't have to go through what Evan's mom had suffered. Plus, Evan could try to figure out the maze of pipes. “I could try it,” said Evan. “I could get him there.”

“That's a real Wuftoom talking!” Tret exclaimed, and gave him another hearty clap. Evan was unprepared this time and nearly fell forward onto his face.

As Tret pulled Evan along, he pursed his shriveled lips and whistled. It was a harsh, rasping sound, but then Suzie and Ylander joined in. Somehow, their raspings went together and mixed into a kind of song. It wasn't exactly beautiful, but it wasn't awful, either.

Evan frantically tried to think of what he would say to get Jordan to the Wuftoom's basement. “I've kidnapped your mother?” “There's buried treasure?” What could he tell him? It
had
to work. He took a glance back. He could see the place where they'd fallen into the big pipe, but he didn't recognize anything else. He wasn't sure if this was even the same pipe that went to the Wuftoom's cave.

They climbed one by one into a smaller pipe. Tret went first, then Evan, then Ylander and Suzie. Something about the smaller pipe calmed Evan. It was just big enough for them to fit through in their full expanded shape, but they had to crawl. He started to feel the water, the way his flexible limbs slid over the metal. The sound of the other Wuftoom breathing filled him. They turned and squished through pipes that got smaller and smaller. As they twisted through forks and squeezed through turns, Evan lost more and more of his bearings, until he despaired of ever remembering the way. And he still didn't know what he'd say to Jordan.

“How do you think he'll react when he sees us?” asked Ylander. “I bet he'll scream!”

“And vomit!” said Suzie.

“He might try to run,” said Tret. “We have to be ready for that.”

“I didn't do anything,” said Evan. Why hadn't he? Why hadn't he thrown something? He could have just turned the light on and Olen would have run.

“Oh, I did!” Suzie laughed. “I barfed all over the place!”

The other two laughed.

Evan managed to fake a grin.
I'm a Wuftoom,
he thought.
It's a joke.
He held the grin until the others had stopped laughing. By that time they had reached a very small pipe, like the one Evan had first gone down.

Evan wondered how on earth he was supposed to go up it. Was he already supposed to know?

“I'll go first,” said Tret. “It's important that we go to the right place because it'll be bad enough being aboveground, even if it's good and dark. I'll do the climbing, so you don't have to worry about that now. It's something that takes a little practice. Ylander and Suzie will follow you, so you can't slip back. Now, when I squeeze my head into the pipe, you grab on to my legs.”

Evan nodded.

Tret pushed his head, which was nearly as broad as a human head, into the pipe. It squooshed easily without a sound. Evan twisted his nub arms around Tret's sticky, membraned legs. Slowly, they started moving upward. Evan felt Tret's legs glue together as they started entering the pipe, and Evan's arms were glued with them, around each other and around Tret's legs. He felt his membranes rub against Tret's. They were tightly pressed like one big worm.

He felt his head and then his body enter and was surprised to find that his breathing and thinking remained normal. The only way he knew he was all squeezed up was that he couldn't move. The walls of the pipe felt slimy, yet cool and comforting. He felt the stickiness of membrane against his glued-together legs and knew it must be Ylander or Suzie.

They were slowly moving upward, twisting and turning. Evan felt the coolness of the walls and the darkness on his eyes, and the movement was smooth, so that he could almost have fallen asleep, like he was rocking in a ship at sea.

Then his head suddenly expanded to full size. Tret stood above him and reached his arms down. They twisted around Evan's and pulled him out, his body popping outward as he came. Tret pulled Evan onto the floor, where he lay on his back and struggled to breathe. He felt too cold.

With a quiet pop, Suzie and Ylander jumped out of the pipe, landing smoothly on their legs. Evan tried to gasp and his body expanded, but it didn't contract again. He went on expanding. There was too much air inside him. He let out a wheeze.

“Oh, he's never felt the air before!” cried Suzie, rushing over to him. She reached down and curled her arms around Evan's. With her help, he stumbled to his legs, still feeling all wrong.

“What's wrong with me?” he gasped. His voice was harsher and more growly, like he wasn't getting enough air, though he was sure he was getting too much.

“It's the air,” said Suzie. “We can stand it if there's no sunlight, but it doesn't feel good. It's like a human holding his breath underwater.”

“But I was just up there a few hours ago!” cried Evan. “And I feel like I have too much air, not too little. I feel like I'm going to fly away, break apart, freeze to death.” Tret and Ylander were now with him, their lips twisted in the same line.

“A few hours is enough,” said Tret. “Once you've been underground, you can't go back.” He picked up an old phone from the ground and pulled it over toward him. “We'll make this quick.”

Evan sat down in front of the phone, rolling over his rubber legs. It was an old house phone with a cord, so old it had a rotary dial instead of buttons. It was covered in dust.

“Are you sure this works?” he asked.

“Try it,” said Tret.

Evan picked it up and put it to the side of his head. He heard a dial tone. “I guess it is working . . . Why are you laughing?”

The three Wuftoom were obviously trying not to smile, and Suzie could barely contain her giggles.

“We don't hear through the sides of our head like humans,” said Tret. “We hear through our whole bodies, just like we breathe.”

Evan kicked himself. He should have known that. “I know. I just . . .” He tried to smile.

“Take it easy, kid. It's only your first night,” said Tret. Evan gasped and stared at the dial. He was getting more and more nervous. What if he couldn't convince Jordan to come down here? He tried to take a breath and was filled with too much air, so much it made him dizzy. He swayed a little.

“We're sorry, new one,” said Ylander. “Just hang in there. Make the call and we can go back down.”

Evan pulled on the dial, and it spun out of control. Without fingers, his nubs were too big to fit into the holes. He tried to make a point with the flesh of his nub so that it looked like a finger, but it was only a littler nub, all misshapen and still too big. He slammed his nub down on the shut-off. He felt dizzy.

Tret saw his problem. “Look, you have to really concentrate on it. You can make almost any shape, but it won't last long because it takes effort.” Tret demonstrated by holding out a nub. A long, thin finger slowly extended from it, then slowly grew back into its normal shape.

But the air was making it hard for Evan to even try. He stared at his nub and willed the point to grow, but only a tiny piece came out. The effort of it made him even more dizzy.

Suzie thrust something at him. It was a metal rod, half the width of a finger and three times as long.

“I found it on the floor,” she said.

Evan pressed it between his two nubs as hard as he could. He didn't know Jordan's cell phone number, but he did know the land line. Jordan had used it to call his mother after school. Evan dialed the first number, then the second, then the third, until finally he had dialed all seven. The work of dialing the phone was exhausting. His vision flickered out, then back in. Evan sank to his left and began to fall. Tret caught him.

“Get it together,” he whispered.

“Hello?” said a sleepy voice at the other end. It was Jordan.

That snapped Evan back a little. Without thinking, he pressed the receiver to where his ear would be. “Hi, Jordan. It's Evan,” said Evan.
Don't ask Evan who,
he thought.

“Evan? Oh . . . hi,” said Jordan. Did Jordan know some other Evan? Was it possible that he actually remembered this Evan, to whom he'd barely spoken two words in all their years of school together? At this point, Evan didn't care which.

“Hey, listen, Jordan. I'm sorry I'm calling so late, but what I've got to tell you is really important. I know what's wrong with you. You have the same thing I had.”

“How do you know I have something? I don't even know for sure if I have something,” said Jordan, his voice tight and on edge.

“I know. It's because I've been through it that I know. People are talking about how you fell into that pit. That's exactly what happened to me.”

“You got sick two years ago,” said Jordan. “You were in the hospital, and now you're locked up at home dying. That's what everyone says.”

Evan had no idea anyone was talking about him. He had assumed they'd never noticed he was gone. No one had ever sent him a card or called. “I'm not dying anymore. But I almost did. The doctors almost killed me. But my grandmother heard about a man who had a cure.”

“A man?” Jordan's voice was flat. Evan couldn't tell whether he was buying it or not.

“It's not approved or anything. But I'm better now. You have to come here and get the cure before it's too late.”

“You had two years,” said Jordan.

“You don't want to go through what I went through!” At least this part Evan could be sincere about. “You don't want to be in the hospital. You don't want to be locked away in a room and have everyone forget about you.” Although Jordan's room was quite a bit better than his, he thought bitterly.

There was a pause at the other end. “Where is it?”

Evan stared at a piece of paper Tret had laid in front of him. “Thirteen eighty-seven West Taylor Street. It's a big house that's all boarded up. But the door's unlocked. The door to the basement is in the kitchen. I know it sounds bad, but the guy could get arrested for giving medicine that's not approved. You have to come tonight because he's going away again.”

“You really think it's the pit?” asked Jordan.

“The goo,” said Evan. “This doctor says it's a parasite. He's tried to tell the other doctors, but no one believes him.”

“But I've been feeling bad for a whole week, so maybe that wasn't it.”

“It is,” said Evan quickly. “And don't tell your parents,” he added, trying not to sound like it mattered. “My mom didn't want me to take the medicine. She wouldn't have let me so my grandma had to sneak me out.”

“Yeah, you're right,” said Jordan. “I'll see you in a little while. Thanks.” Jordan hung up, and, slowly, Evan did too, grasping the receiver with both nubs.

“Well?” asked Tret eagerly.

Evan breathed a sigh. This time he felt like he'd gotten the right amount of air. “He's coming,” he said. “We just have to wait. But he lives across town from here, so it might take a while.” He took another breath. He still felt faint, but he thought he'd be able to hold on.

Suzie was sitting in a ball on the floor. Ylander was standing, but he was leaning against a wall. It looked like they were feeling the effects of the air too. Only Tret seemed to be doing all right. But he saw what was happening to the others.

“Okay, we'll take turns keeping watch for the proem and the rest of us will go back into the pipes. I'll start, and I'll call you after a while,” he said to Suzie and Ylander.

They nodded, and without speaking, Ylander went down first. Evan grabbed on to him and Suzie followed. They moved together, snaked around each other, for a short time and then came out in a slightly larger pipe. They were still squooshed down quite a bit and all together like one worm, but Evan still felt better than he had up top. He didn't feel squeezed at all. In fact, he was breathing much better. From the way they were breathing, Evan could tell Suzie and Ylander felt the same.