Hear the Children Calling (21 page)

There were a few moments of silence as the adults pondered the idea. Then Lillian gave her hands a quick clap.

“I have an idea,” she cried. “Why not recreate the scene of the crime? They do it so often in mystery novels. We could all go to the airport, visit that gift shop, and see if anything comes from that point.”

Natalie and Stuart nodded in unison.

“Great idea,” Stuart said. “Let’s all get our coats and—”

Natalie tapped his shoulder, then pointed at Beth. She had fallen asleep, her head rested on her arm and a strand of red hair lay across her cake dish.

“Not all of us,” she said. “I don’t think Beth could take it.”

“Then I’ll stay with her,” Lillian said.

“Oh, no, we need you at the airport,” Stuart said. “The combination of both your memories is vital. No, Natalie can stay here with Beth.”

Natalie nodded. “You’ll call as soon as you think of anything.”

“Of course, darling,” Lillian insisted.

As Lillian got out the coats, Stuart picked up his daughter and carried her to her bedroom. As he tucked the serape in around her, she opened her eyes halfway and mumbled, “Peter’s waiting.”

Stuart kissed her forehead. “I know, honey,” he whispered. “We’ll find him.” He exited the room and joined his in-laws in the foyer.

“I hope this works,” Oscar said.

“It’s worth a try,” Stuart said. “Come on, before it gets too late and the gift shop closes.”

In fact, the shop-owner was beginning to turn off his lights just as the three entered. The old man eyed them with the disdain he reserved for people who bought last-minute gifts. Stuart and his in-laws paid no attention to the stares as they headed toward the display of knickknacks. They were also completely unaware that, from a phone booth across the lobby, they were being carefully observed. The pale-faced young man, who seemed much younger than his fifteen years, was dressed in a fringed suede jacket and faded dungarees. His eyes were the strangest blue color, so pale they seemed almost white. He leaned deeper into the phone stall and spoke in soft but clear tones.

“They’re here, Father.”

“Don’t call me that. Someone might be listening.”

“I’m sorry . . .”

“You know what you have to do. Use your powers to the fullest, boy. Use them, and destroy our enemies.”

“Understood.”

Carefully, the boy hung up the phone. To anyone observing, he looked like a late-model hippie visiting New Mexico in search of a new, peaceful life. He hoisted his big satchel up over his shoulder and strolled over to a water fountain. He noticed the older woman holding a small replica of a road-runner. He wondered what had taken them so damned long to find it. From the moment the Morses had arrived in Albuquerque, he had expected them to end up back at that gift boutique. After all, it would be the last definite memory the Blairs would have had. So he had waited patiently in the terminal, the position assigned to him ever since his father learned the kid’s family was flying into New Mexico. And now they were back, on the verge of remembering what had really happened.

“Destroy them,” he repeated. He tucked himself
into another phone booth and began to unzip the satchel. It was stuffed full of laundry, except for one glimmering, diamond-shaped crystal. The teenager held it up and let the overhead lights refract through it into small rainbows. His years of training at the center had led up to this moment, when he could prove the worth of his talents. When he got through with his targets, his father would be so proud of him. He would prove that because he was the oldest of the children at LaMane—older than the next child by five years—he was also the most powerful.

He imagined himself in the gift shop, just behind the display of bric-a-brac. Slivers of blue light emanated from his fingertips, an electrical current traveling directly into the road-runner statue held by the woman. Electricity to bring life . . .

In the gift shop, Lillian let out a scream and dropped the road-runner.

“Did you remember something?” Stuart asked, eagerly.

“Lady, don’t break the merchandise,” the shop-owner snapped.

Lillian looked at the two men. “It burned me,” she cried.

“How could—”

Before Stuart could finish his sentence, there was a sudden rumbling, like the shock of an earthquake. The display case in front of them began to wobble.

Cursing, the shop-owner came running from behind the counter. “Get outta my shop, you troublemakers! Out! O-U—”

He never finished spelling the word. Suddenly, a stuffed mountain lion that had been set in the window came to life. It sprang forward with a might roar, claws ripping into the shop-owner’s chest. As the man screamed in dismay, its sharp teeth sank deep into his neck, sending a great gush of blood to the window. All around the shop, dozens of innocent toy animals began to come to life, howling, screeching, roaring. Road-runner statuettes zipped around the room in a
bizarre, almost comical way, smashing into walls and chattering noisily. Armadillos rolled up into balls and badgers showed sharp teeth. Hissing, one of them raced toward Stuart.

“Let’s get out of here,” Stuart cried, grabbing Lillian by the arm.

“What’s happening?” Lillian demanded.

“I don’t know,” Stuart cried over the din. When the badger was within range, he gave it a swift kick and sent it across the room. It smashed against the wall and landed to the floor in a plush, lifeless heap. “Oscar!”

Oscar did not answer. Stuart turned to urge him out of the store. When he saw his father-in-law, his stomach turned flip-flops.

Oscar had collapsed against a display of gum and candy, his face striped by bloody claw marks. Something long and brown was hanging from his lip. Stuart realized to his dismay that it was a rubber rattlesnake. But this toy had somehow gained the poisonous qualities of the real thing.

“Oscar,” Lillian cried out, rushing to him.

“No, get out,” Stuart said. “Someone is doing this to us. Don’t you see the people in the terminal? None of them hears us. None of them sees the blood on the window. You get out and call Natalie. Let me help Oscar.”

Lillian had turned white as a sheet, but somehow she managed to stumble toward the doorway. An armadillo, only an inch long and made of glass, skittered across the floor. Lizards jumped from the shelves, landing in her hair. Lillian screeched and slapped at them, but continued on to the door.

Then, just as she was about to reach it, a steel gate rolled down from its recess in the ceiling and slammed shut. They were locked in.

“Help us,” Lillian cried to the people walking by. A flight had just come in and a large group was heading toward the baggage area.

“Please! We’re trapped! Help!”

As if she didn’t even exist, not one of the people turned her way. Lillian went on begging for help until at last she caught the look of a bedraggled teenager staring at her from across the room. His eyes were so full of malevolence that all fears created by the animated toys paled in comparison to the dread that suddenly arose in Lillian’s mind.

He knows who we are. He knows why we’re here, and he’s going to kill us.

She pulled away from the window, kicking at the road-runner puppets that were pecking at her ankles, drawing blood through her stockings.

“Stuart, what will we do?” she asked, her voice shrill.

“The window, Lillian,” Stuart said, hooking his arms around Oscar’s chest. He had managed to rip the rattlesnake away, and now trickles of blood poured from two puncture wounds in Oscar’s lip. The unconscious man was impossibly heavy, and Stuart had to muster every ounce of his strength to drag him toward the display window. It was free now of animals, who were either flying or crawling wildly. But the mountain lion that had attacked the store-owner lay on its side, inanimate. The lizards that had jumped on Lillian and the road-runners that had pecked at her were also strewn about the floor, motionless. A quick thought flashed through Stuart’s mind that, once the toy had been used, it was rendered lifeless again. But there was no time for that. He had to get them out of the store, fast. Whoever was doing this had already killed one man and seriously injured another. He lay his father-in-law down and picked up a magazine rack. Hoisting it like an awkward javelin, he threw it through the display window. Shards of glass flew everywhere.

And still the people in the terminal moved on, oblivious.

Stuart helped Lillian through the opening. Then he went to drag Oscar out, stepping carefully over the broken glass. He stepped backward through the window, his arms hooked around the unconscious man’s
chest. Just as he was about to hoist Oscar through the opening, he heard Lillian let out a gasp. Following her gaze, he looked up at the window frame, impossibly, like a movie running backward, the glass of the window was flying back into place.

With a grunt of effort, Stuart tried to move on. But somehow, his feet were frozen to the ground. He let go of Oscar and tried to pull himself out. But his body was frozen, held in the window by some force. The glass was fusing itself together and he could not get out of its way. As it neared his chest, he cried out in dismay, begging for help.

“Lillian, for God’s sake, pull me out!”

The older woman just stood frozen, unable to comprehend the madness of what she was witnessing. It was all a dream, just a horrible nightmare.

“Help me! God, hel—”

The last words were followed by a loud gulping sound as the windowpane fought to heal itself in spite of the obstacle in its way. Molecules reconstructed themselves, created new glass where there was nothing, pushed the glass through Stuart’s waistline . . .

Behind him, Lillian screamed and screamed.

28

M
ICHAEL
C
OLPAN WAS DOING HIS SCIENCE HOMEWORK
when something like a balloon blew up in his chest. It suddenly felt as if his insides were being pushed away, leaving only empty space. The sensation was so painful that he tumbled out of his chair, holding himself across his stomach.

“Dad?”

He barely choked out the word. Then he remembered that his father was working late tonight and that Emilina had gone home. He was alone. The terrifying feeling that something very bad had just happened to someone who cared about him washed over the boy like scalding water.

He heard the little girl’s voice again, the same one he’d heard in a dream a while earlier.

They’re killing our father. Help him, Peter. They’re killing Daddy.

“Where are you?” Michael called.

But there was no answer.

The pain across his abdomen heated up to such an intensity that Michael sprawled across the floor and screamed. He doubled up, his eyes squeezed shut, crying out desparately for help—from his father, from the little girl, from God.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Michael stared up at his ceiling, unmoving and dazed. If only his father were there . . .

She had said something about someone “killing Daddy.” No! Michael thought hard and felt that his father was still very much alive. But that horrible feeling, the sense that someone had been hurt very badly, was inexplicable. Michael tried again to call the little girl with his mind, but with no luck.

He had to talk to someone. Grabbing his hooded jacket from the end of his bed, he slipped it on and left the house. The children were forbidden to walk around at night, but Michael didn’t care. He needed to be with his father, and even if they threatened to lock him up in the watch tower, they couldn’t stop him.

He shivered and zipped up his jacket. The watch tower. It stood at one corner of the LaMane Center, where a guard kept vigilance to be sure no one broke in. Dr. Adams said it was to protect them from the Outsiders. But he never explained why no one was allowed out of the center, either.

Nightmares about that tower had haunted Michael for most of his life. Alone on the darkened, road, with only the wind to speak to him, Michael was unable to resist the memory of his most recent dream.

He was dangling in midair, a sharp pain firing from the top of his head. Someone had him by his thick crop of hair and he was being held arm’s distance from an open window in the tower. The wind slapped him hard, and the ground below spun in circles.

“What’s your name?”

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommmmeeeeee!”

“Tell me your name or I’ll drop you, kid. What is your name?”

“Peter . . . Pete-er Morse.”

“No!”

And suddenly he was falling free, down, down . . .

Michael shook his head hard to free it of the horrible dream. How many times had it come to his mind over the last years? It seemed so real, like something that had really happened. But he knew it couldn’t have. His name wasn’t Peter, it was Michael Colpan.

So why did that little girl keep calling him Peter?

He started to cut across the road to the main street, but he noticed a light on at Jenny Segal’s house. Jenny had heard voices too, he remembered. Maybe she could help him figure this out.

But Jenny’s mother wasn’t very nice, and if she knew he’d come here alone, she’d call Dr. Adams on him. Jenny’s father was okay, but Michael was certain the best thing to do was sneak into Jenny’s room through her back window. It was on the ground floor, the middle window of three. Michael hurried over to it and stood on tiptoes to peer in. Jenny was sitting on her floor, dressing a doll. She started when Michael rapped at the window, but smiled when she realized who it was. Hurrying to close her door, she came and let him in.

“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “If anyone finds out you’re out alone—”

“Jenny, I need to talk to you,” Michael said. He was shaking all over.

“Are you cold?” Jenny asked. “Want my comforter? You could sit in the chair.”

Michael shook his head. “Listen to me, Jenny. Those voices you hear. Do they ever make you hurt or feel scared?”

Jenny looked confused. “Not at all. I always feel safe and happy when I hear from that woman.”

She sighed, bending to retrieve her doll from the floor.