Tears shone in her eyes and I looked away. I always looked away when she cried. I couldn’t take it.
“That’s mean,” I whispered. “That’s really mean. That’s stepping over the line.”
I sank into the chair beside her bed and leaned over, my elbows on my knees, the 3XD now hanging loosely in my hand.
“Alfred, I’m all you have.”
“Stop it,” I said.
“All you have in the world. Of course you would dream of being a hero, a brave knight riding to my rescue. But you know such things don’t really exist, don’t you, baby? Holy swords and demonic yard gnomes, Alfred? You know it can’t be real.”
I nodded.
“Alfred, your father wasn’t a business tycoon or the last son of Lancelot. He was a big-headed, long-haul truck driver named Herman.”
“My dad . . . my dad was a trucker?”
“Watermelons. Doesn’t that make more sense than what you’ve been dreaming?”
I nodded. “You bet it does.”
“And isn’t that what you want most of all, Alfred? For everything to make sense?”
I lifted my head and looked at her. The same skeletal face, the same deep-set, black-ringed eyes, the same yellowish skin and thin gray lips pulled back from her teeth. Just like four years ago (if it really was four years ago), it was Mom and it wasn’t Mom.
“So what do I do now?” I asked.
“Wake up, honey. That’s all. Just . . . wake up.”
She smiled at me, and it was her smile, my mom’s smile.
“It isn’t right,” I mumbled. “It’s not fair. You’re all that I had—why did you leave me alone? I’m so sick of being alone—I don’t want to be alone anymore!”
“Alfred, I know, I know,” she cried. “But you have to be strong for me, baby. I need you now. All we have is each other, and I need you to be strong for me now.”
I nodded. “Okay. Okay, Mom. I can . . . I can be strong . . .”
“Then you have to wake up, Alfred.”
“How—how do I do that? How do I wake up?”
“Look.”
She pointed toward the door. I had kicked it off its hinges—I distinctly remembered kicking it off its hinges—but now it was whole again and closed, and sprawled on the floor with his back against it was Op Nine, his chin against his chest so I couldn’t see his face.
“These are the dreams we dream,” Mom whispered.
“The worst that come before waking.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. But I did understand. I stood up and walked over to him. I saw his chest rise and fall. He was alive.
“You must choose now, Alfred,” she said behind me. Her voice was sad and soft and sounded very far away. “Between the waking and the dream. I know you don’t want to wake up. Waking up means you have to face the fact I might die— but I need you now. Please don’t abandon me, Alfred, my baby. Please wake up and take care of me.”
I raised the 3XD that didn’t exist and pointed it at the top of the head of the OIPEP operative, the Superseding Protocol Agent, who also didn’t exist. It wasn’t murder. How could it be? He didn’t exist. None of it did. I was just a twelve-year-old kid who couldn’t face the fact that his mother was dying. Enough fooling around. I needed to wake up.
“Well,” she said sharply. “What are you waiting for, Alfred?” “That which must be done,” I whispered. I took a deep breath, pivoted around, and swung the barrel of the demon-blaster toward the face of my mother.
“If this is just a dream—if this isn’t real—then this won’t hurt at all.”
I squeezed the trigger.
39
There was no blood, just a blinding flash of white and orange, flecked with black, and a huge distorted face shot out of the fireball, zooming across the room toward me, its mouth a yawning blackness, an abyss that swallowed me and a roaring voice boomed inside my head, THOU CANNOT ESCAPE US, FOR WE ARE INSIDE THEE ALREADY!
I heaved Op Nine to his feet, pulling his arm around my shoulders. He moaned against my chest. I pulled him into the hallway, my body turned at an angle so I could point the 3XD into the hospital room—only it wasn’t a hospital room anymore but a maelstrom of interlaced spinning wheels of fire. I wasn’t sure what that was about.
I headed toward the stairs, then stopped. A wave of twisting, squirming black creatures about the size of my fist was barreling toward us.
A wave of scorpions, millions of them, their three-inch tails hissing and whipping, smashed against our ankles and rose to our knees. Their barbs stabbed through my pants again and again as I pushed Op Nine through the undulating river of their swarming bodies. The pain was excruciating, but I told myself they weren’t real; that if my mind held we’d make it out okay.
Then the river parted and the scorpions disappeared into the cracks and crevices of the walls. We were halfway to the stairs when the walls began to sag as if they were melting, and faces began to emerge in the undulating plaster. I saw my mother and Bernard Samson, Uncle Farrell, and Lord Bennacio. I saw the faces of all the people who died because of me and they didn’t say anything, but their eyes were sad and filled with the loss of betrayal. I lowered my eyes and kept moving.
I came to the head of the stairs, but the stairs were gone. We were teetering on the edge of a black chasm and I could actually see rivulets of light pouring down into it, like water over falls, and something very hot was bearing down on us from behind. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck curl and singe, and tasted acrid smoke on my tongue. I shook Op Nine as hard as I could and shouted in his ear, “This would really be a good time for you to wake up!” But he didn’t.
“Not real,” I muttered. “Not real.”
I couldn’t go back, but this was the worst thing yet, so I couldn’t go forward either. We teetered on the edge while the heat grew more intense behind us. Something told me if I turned around to face it, we were lost. I closed my eyes, took a huge breath, and whispered, “Let go. Let go. Let go.”
I wrapped both arms around Op Nine and jumped into the chasm.
We tumbled into the utter darkness until we smacked at the bottom of the stairs.
Looming in the open doorway was a ten-foot-tall being of shimmering golden light, a demon without the masks of my mom or Mike’s mom. It had assumed its true form, and its face was more beautiful than anything nature gave us ordinary people, only the eyes were black pits, black as the chasm I just fell through, as if something had torn or burned them away.