Jonah Havensby (26 page)

From behind him, he heard a gurgling and, when he turned, he saw that the tube from the bottom of the pot hand been fastened to the rim of the tub. The water from the bottom of the pot was now surging through that tube and into the bottom of the tub.

He looked inside the tub and found that there was a stopper on a chain that could be used to block the drain, but, at the moment, it was just sliding around in the water. The water was going into the tub and then moving right down the drain.

He inched back, expecting water to come flowing all over the floor. When it didn’t, he looked back into the tub. It was definitely draining, but not onto the floor. He put his face down against the floorboard and looked under the tub. What he found here was another piece of tube that led from the drain somewhere beneath the floor.

Someone had taken the time to fashion him some indoor plumbing. Cold water came into the pot from the wall. Then he could use the hotplate underneath to warm the water, which then led into the tub for a nice relaxing bath.

Just then, he heard a rustling from the other room. He wondered if whoever had captured him had come back. He went to the wall that was the tree trunk and put his hands against it. Ever so slowly, he inched his way back around the tree trunk. He was sure he wouldn’t be able to overcome his captors, but he wanted to see them before they saw him.

He moved around until he heard the rustling again and then he stopped. He made it just around the shower curtains and he still hadn’t seen anyone, but the rustling seemed to be coming from the wall just around the trunk. He slid forward and then craned his neck to see the other side. No one was there.

He moved away from the wall and looked at the whole room. On the far side, where he thought the noise was coming from was a large metal pet carrier. It was pushed up next to the wall under a window. Next to that, was a small coffee table with a twelve-inch flat-screen television sitting on it. In the far corner was a large red punching bag that hung from the ceiling. When he made his way toward the punching bag, he saw a door out of the corner of his eye. A door! He hadn’t seen it before because it was built on the exact opposite side of the tree trunk from where the shower curtains hung.

He started for the door when all of a sudden Grouchy came out of a large pile of shredded newspapers inside the pet carrier with a hiss and a high-pitched bark.

The surprise made Jonah trip over his own two feet and he went down on his hands and knees. He was practically face to face with a very angry raccoon who hissed and screeched and even made a few more barking noises. All the while, he threw himself against every wall of the carrier, sometimes moving it an inch or two this way or that, but making no headway in freeing himself.

“What are you doing here?” Jonah asked him.

Grouchy’s tirade continued.

“Okay, calm down. It’s not my fault. I’m just as much a prisoner here myself. Not my fault.” Jonah tried to explain as he got to his feet, but the raccoon was having none of his explanation.

Jonah shook his head and moved to the door.

He was expecting it to be locked, so when he turned the handle and jammed his shoulder against it hard, he was surprised when it flung right open.

He had opened the door so hard that he was flung against the wooden railing of the patio outside. That’s when he realized he was looking straight down into thin air, the ground was very far below him.

He scrambled backwards and hit the outside wall of the cabin. Except that this was no cabin, it was a tree-house. In a very tall, very large tree.

He looked up and he could see a sea of other trees around him. He was up in the canopy of them. Everywhere he looked were green branches and brown bark. The roof, it seemed, was just long enough to keep the branches of this tree at bay. Some hung over the end of the roof, like the tree was trying to reclaim the house.

What he thought of as a patio extended all the way around the house, and the house wrapped halfway around the tree. Next to him on his left, up against the railing that spanned the entire length, was Eric’s bike, tied to a rope that extended through a pulley system that hung from the end of the roof.

He tentatively took a step toward the railing. He put a hand on it and tried to shake it. When it didn’t move, he put his other hand on it and shook it again. When he found it to be sturdy. He moved toward the railing and looked down.

He couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how high he was. He could see the ground, covered in leaves, but there were also several branches below him as well. He backed away and moved toward the door.

He backed all the way into the house in a low crouch, kind of finding his center of gravity. Once he was back inside, he put both hands on the tree. Somewhere in his mind, he knew he had been walking freely around the house, but now that he knew it was very high up, he no longer trusted the floorboards. At least Grouchy had calmed down and disappeared back into his newspaper nest.

Jonah backed off of the tree, still crouched, and left his hands up as if he were balancing. He moved to the center of the room. He jumped up, fully expecting to crash through the floor when he landed. He didn’t, so he did it again. He did it three more times, each time jumping higher and higher, and each time expecting to fall to the ground far below. When nothing happened, he began to tentatively move through the tree-house once again. He moved this way and that, sometimes sliding his feet instead of lifting them.

When he made his way to the wall by the small television, he noticed something sitting on the floor. When he picked it up, he saw that it was a small digital movie camera that had been placed on the notebook containing the mysterious notes. The read-out on the camera said that there had been something recorded on it. When he looked down at the notebook on the floor, he saw that it had been turned to the page with the note about Athena Stapleton. Underneath that note, in the same fluid handwriting a new note said:

Play Me

It was already connected to the television. When he found the play button and pushed it, the television screen lit up. A moment later, he saw the tree-house, the room that he was in right now. The camera bobbed and weaved as if someone were holding it, then it turned as if someone had balanced it on the television to face the room, but there was someone in the way. He saw the bottom of a necktie and a long white coat, the kind of coat doctors wore. The kind his father often wore when he worked in his lab. Jonah’s breath hitched and he nearly dropped the camera. Instead, he sat down on the floor and put the camera gently down in front of him.

But when the person moved back and came fully into the frame of the television, it wasn’t his dad, but, maybe, it sort of was. This man had a receding hairline and shock-white hair. He wore a lab coat over a starched button-down shirt and khaki pants. The necktie didn’t come all the way down to his waist, where it should be. It stopped right at his belly. He had keen gray eyes, like his father and he wore thick glasses, just like his dad. This man was almost like Jonah’s father and Albert Einstein got mixed together in a blender. That’s exactly what this man looked like.

Jonah moved closer to the television.

“Hello, Jonah Havensby,” The man said, and waved animatedly at the camera. The man had some kind of European accent that Jonah couldn’t distinguish. He had never heard Albert Einstein speak, but he always thought Einstein would have this kind of accent.

“I am, well…” the man began, “Well, you haven’t named me, so I guess I should start at the beginning. I am you.”

Jonah felt the color run out of his face. He’d been through a lot today. Or a lot last night and today. To tell the truth, he’d lost track of time. He’d been through a lot.

“I know. I know,” the man said from the television. “This doesn’t make sense, now does it? How can you be two people at once? Well, I guess the question we should be answering is, how can you be more people than you are, yes?”

Jonah felt like he was going to be sick again.

“Now, here is what we know,” the man on the television said with a wave. He began to talk animatedly with his hands. “You are not a human being, we know that from Doctor Stapleton. You are an uncategorized life-form that we have no reference for.”

“But!” He said with both his index fingers pointed upwards and then brought them down as if he were pointing directly at Jonah. “You have taken on the characteristics of a human being. I would dare say that right now you are more human than alien at this very moment, and that, dear boy, is why you have stopped growing so rapidly. Physically, you are the fourteen year-old you believe yourself to be, and I believe that you will continue to grow at the normal rate of any human on this planet now. You are very tall for a five year-old, eh?”

The man chuckled to himself. Jonah did not.

“Now. Who am I?” The man continued. “I am a physical manifestation of your desire both to have your father back, and to have someone who was as smart as him in order to help you survive. This was both a conscious thought, and a subconscious desire. You created me exactly two months and three days ago from this very day as you slept your first night in the warehouse.”

The man continued. “I did not manifest physically for a while after that, but I did become aware that night. I was the one who fixed your computer tablet for you. That was the first time I manifested. I was also the one who sent the Creature out to get the electric blanket you saw in the hardware store on your second night in town, although you probably do not remember exactly seeing it in the window. But I did.”

Jonah felt like he might go crazy.  This man was exactly what he would think smart people looked like. And this man was telling him that he was a ‘manifestation’ from his subconscious. Jonah had unknowingly created this man and he was the one who had been helping Jonah. How was any of this possible?

“Oh yes,” The man said, stopping himself and clapping his hands together. “The Creature. That is what I call it, you may call him something different. He is, after all, you.” The man laughed at his own little joke again. “When you are you, and I mean, when you are Jonah, we are only vaguely aware of what happens during that time. We register feelings, mostly. Emotions.”

The man had started saying ‘we’. Jonah didn’t fully understand, but he thought he must be talking about the others in his head.

“As the weather got worse, and you began to feel cold and frightened, the next thing you created in your head was a force of brute strength. A protector, if you will. What you came up with is more beast than man. He is a hairy, hulking monster. If I had to guess, I would say you created him to be more a mix of caveman and gorilla.”

Jonah did like cavemen and dinosaurs, and they always looked pretty brutal in pictures, and he’d seen a video a long time ago where an angry gorilla once ripped a whole tree branch off a tree and ripped a tire apart. He didn’t like this, but at least some of it was making sense. Things he had stored in his memory were coming to life to help him. And he suddenly remembered a dream he had about swinging from tree to tree. Was it him, swinging from these trees?

“The Creature was the one who I sent out to ‘borrow’ the things to make our new home here. Understand, now, that this was out of a necessity for security for us. I was unsure as to how long you could survive in the warehouse, and we needed something for a more permanent home, if you will. And having no other resources, we had to make some difficult decisions.”

Jonah had to wonder if his subconscious made that ‘difficult decision’ before or after he started stealing from the fountains in the mall, when he thought his father was a thief, and he became a petty criminal.

“Ah, which brings me to the other one,” the man continued. “You should know about the other one. The Red Devil, as the news has called him. He is a manifestation of your vision of a super hero. Once you had your protector, your brute force, you desired someone good. Someone who did not steal from fountains and would help others. I find it ironic that you chose the form of a devil, but a little devil he is indeed.”

“When he manifested, we found that all the traits you’d read about super heroes had manifested as well, he is brave and noble and you had given him some kind of super speed, but he is also callous, and sometimes rude.”

“He did not wish to steal anything, and so he dislikes the Creature. He also feels that the Creature is rather a lowly beast. He finally relented on the issue that night of the first snowfall. He knew we couldn’t last there in the warehouse.”

“The first time he physically manifested, he waited until you were asleep and then went out looking for the girl, Jenna, the waitress from the diner. He saw that you were attracted to her, and he acted on it. He, of course, could not have foreseen the robbery, but it gave him a splendid chance to show off for her. He subdued the robber, but then took a bag of popcorn as some sort of payment for services.” The man said the last part with a certain amount of disdain.

Jonah remembered seeing popcorn on the floor of the warehouse. He remembered Jenna, but he couldn’t admit that he’d been necessarily attracted to her. That was such an unusual word. He blushed.

“Now, of course, you have moved on to Miss Wong, but that is neither here nor there, Yes?” The man chuckled.

An odd sense came over him. He suddenly felt that these ‘manifestations’, these ‘others’, he had created, knew a little too much about him. His thoughts about Emma were private. Could he keep private thoughts from them if they were inside his head? Away from his subconscious where those thoughts sprang from anyway?

“The fourth, and last, to this point, is the Artist. He is the creative side of you. When you called Eric’s mother, you wished you were a better actor, when you spoke to Emma the second time, when she was shopping, you wished you could speak better. The Artist is aware, and you can thank him for how your new home looks. He is an expert in architecture, in poetry, in invention. It was he who shared his knowledge with the Creature, who put all of this together. I chose the location, of course. He has only manifested once, to finish the varnish on the wood and proclaim the tree-house ready. He is shy and over-dramatic”