Neverworld Wake(7)

Cannon went after her. A few minutes later, he brought her back. She was crying and wearing his hoodie. He tucked her carefully, like some wild bird with a broken wing, into the front seat, whispering, “It’s gonna be all right, Shrieks.”

It was Cannon who got us home.



* * *



—

As the five of us went clambering into Wincroft, dripping wet and drunk, it felt normal for the first time. It felt like the old days. Thank goodness for the defunct top on that convertible. Our brush with death had thawed the ice. We were giddy, teeth chattering as we pulled off our wet clothes, leaving them in a soggy pile on the floor, which Gandalf kept circling while whining. Whitley disappeared upstairs. Martha was on her hands and knees in front of the fireplace, moaning, “I can’t feel my legs.” Cannon went down to the wine cellar, returning with four bottles of Chivas Regal Royal Salute, and poured shots in pink champagne glasses. Whitley dumped a giant mound of white terry-cloth bathrobes on the couch like a pile of dead bodies.

“I’ve never been so scared in my whole life,” she said, giggling.

That was when the doorbell rang.

We all sat up, staring at each other, bewildered. Mentally counting. We were all here.

“Someone call Ghostbusters?” slurred Martha.

“I’ll go,” volunteered Cannon. A sloppy salute, and he disappeared into the foyer. None of us said a word, listening, the only sound the rain drumming on the roof.

A minute later, he was back.

“It’s some old geezer. He’s two hundred years old.”

“It’s Alastair Totters,” said Martha.

“Who?” Cannon snapped.

“Time-traveling villain in The Bend,” mumbled Martha.

“No, no,” whispered Kip, gleeful. “It’s the proverbial kook with Alzheimer’s who wandered away from his nursing home during Elvis Social Hour. Without his medication. They’re always without their medications.”

“I’ll invite him in for a nightcap?” asked Cannon, sighing, a mischievous wink.

“No,” hissed Whitley. “That’s how horror movies start.”

“Chapter three,” Martha muttered.

“Hey,” said Cannon, pointing at Wit. “That’s not very nice. I’m inviting him in—”

“NO!”

Then we were all racing, giggling, tripping over each other as we bumbled to the foyer to see for ourselves, tying up our bathrobes, taking turns to check the peephole, bumping heads. I assumed Cannon was somehow playing a trick on us, that no one would actually be there.

But there he was. An old man.

He was tall, with thick silver hair. Though I couldn’t make out his face in the shadows, I could see that he was dressed in a dark suit and tie. He leaned in, smiling, as if he could see me peering out.

Cannon opened the door with a bow.

“Good evening, sir. How may we help you?”

The man didn’t immediately speak. Something about the way he surveyed us—methodically inspecting each of our faces—made me think he knew us from somewhere.

“Good evening,” he said. His voice was surprisingly rich. “May I enter the premises?”

No one answered, the question being too presumptuous and strange. I gathered he was not senile. His eyes—deep green, gleaming in the porch light—were lucid.

“Oh, you live next door,” said Whitley, stepping beside Cannon. “Because if this is about Burt’s sailboat, the Andiamo, being marooned in front of your dock, he told me to tell you he had problems with the anchor and he’s working on getting a tow next week.”

“I do not live next door.”

He stared at us another beat, his face expectant.

“It’s really best if I come inside to explain.”

“Tell us what you want right there,” said Cannon.

The man nodded, unsurprised. It was then that I noticed two bizarre things.

One: he looked like Darrow’s musical director, Mr. Joshua. For a moment my drunken mind believed that it was Mr. Joshua, that something terrible had happened to him in the year since I’d last seen him. He’d suffered some tragedy and aged twenty-five years, his hair going silver, his face growing tattered. But it wasn’t Mr. Joshua. Mr. Joshua was slight and rosy, quick to laugh. This man was bony, with a hawkish face, one that would look at home on foreign currency or atop a monument in a town square. It was as if he were the identical twin brother of Mr. Joshua, as if they’d been separated at birth and had totally different life experiences, Mr. Joshua’s nurturing and this man’s harrowing, bringing him to look the way he did.

Two: there was no car in the driveway, so the question of how he’d come here without an umbrella yet remained perfectly dry hung in the air, vaguely alarming, like a faint odor of gas.

“You’re all dead,” he said.





“Oh, dear. You’ll have to excuse me. That’s not accurate.”

The old man placed a hand over his eyes, shaking his head. “I overshot it. Went for the dramatic, Masterpiece Theater effect. I apologize. Let’s try that again, shall we?”

He cleared his throat, smiling.

“You’re all nearly dead. Wedged between life and death. Time for you has become snagged on a splinter, forming a closed-circuited potentiality called a Neverworld Wake.”