Jonah Havensby (29 page)

“Quiet,” Jonah said. “I don’t think that’s exactly the point.”

The man began the descriptions of the others that Jonah apparently had within him, and the fact that the way they manifested themselves was an unconscious choice, why the devil looked like the devil and the man who was speaking looked a little bit like a well-known scientist. Eric’s question was sort of answered by that, so he stopped asking questions.

Things began to fall into place in Eric’s head. The man on the screen first spoke about the devil being Jonah’s idea of a super good-guy type. The red devil had actually swooped in to save him from Logan. And Jonah certainly knew Eric’s problems with Logan. That kind of made sense. And hadn’t Jonah complained of headaches like they were right behind his eye. He even had a pretty crushing one right in front of Eric, Emma and Logan. Was that the beginning of changing into something else?

The descriptions of the robberies certainly fell in line with what Eric had heard on the news, but that didn’t mean Jonah had turned into something and went to get these things himself. Or did it?

Eric couldn’t quite wrap his head around the man claiming that his IQ was nearly twice the genius level. The school had voluntary IQ tests through the guidance office, and the advanced students were more than encouraged to stop by, his mother was the one that finally made Eric go take the test. He ranked high for his age, but certainly not genius level. Those kinds of smarts seemed elusive and unreal to him.

“Do it,” Eric said out of the blue, staring at the television.

“Do what?” Jonah asked.

“Change into something else.”

“I don’t know how.”

“One last thing,” the man on the television said.

“Quiet. This is where I stopped it.” Jonah said. He was sitting on the floor next to the recorder.

“The artist has drawn you portrait sketches in your notebook,” The scientist said from the screen. He held up the notebook and waved it at the camera.

Jonah was thrown for a moment. He remembered seeing the instructions to play the camera, but didn’t know where he had dropped the notebook after that. He scrambled around the television looking for it and found it was on its side up against the wall.

“The others will not make recordings like this. Too much of the spotlight, maybe, no?” The man said with a small laugh. “They might respond to questions if you write them down in the notebook, but there are no guarantees. The Creature is the most non-communicative. You may not get any answers from him at all. He did not like the notebook. He even wrote his short note to you on a separate page because he does not like me so much either.” The man giggled again. “He does seem to like your Grouchy. Birds of a feather!”

Well, that answered one question. The Creature brought everything else here. He liked the raccoon. He wasn’t going to leave him behind. He wondered for a moment if the Creature was going to take care of Grouchy, because he certainly wasn’t.

Jonah flipped the notebook shut and then paged through it again. The first note, the one written in the scrawl and outside the lines, he guessed was the two word note from the Creature. Jonah felt a small pang somewhere deep in his belly when his mind kept registering the word ‘creature’. He didn’t like calling it ‘Creature.’ He had the oddest feeling that he shouldn’t call it that.

The next note, written in extremely legible and flowing cursive he decided must have come from the Scientist. It was he, after all, who seemed to send others out on chores, so he must have been the one to send Jonah out to Clapton.

“Good bye now, Jonah Havensby,” the man on the screen said with a wave to the camera. “Until we meet again. Or not meet again. Or probably not meet at all,” The man seemed to crack himself up and search for the words he meant. He was still mumbling something when he moved off screen and the recording turned off and the screen went blank.

Jonah turned the page and there was an extremely detailed drawing of the man from the television, with his crazy hair and all. Jonah could see the resemblance between Albert Einstein and his father. It was such a weird thing to see.

Eric leaned over his shoulder.

“He looks like my dad and Albert Einstein at the same time,” Jonah confessed.

“I saw the Einstein. I’ve never met your dad.”

“Well, he’s in there. Something about the face and the eyes. It’s so weird.”

Jonah turned the page and the next drawing was of the red devil. It wasn’t in color, but Eric would have recognized him anywhere. He wore a long, black suicide coat and black board shorts. His tail hovered just over his shoulder. In the drawing, he was giving a thumbs up and smiling a particularly goofy smile, like he was smiling for a camera and trying too hard, or smiling really big because someone had told him he had to and he wasn’t the least bit interested in taking direction.

“That’s him,” Eric said. “That’s they guy that was at the school.” He didn’t know he was going to say it, but then said “Or..you..at the school?”

The thought was still too fresh and weird, so Jonah let it pass for the moment. Him at the school. Him foiling a robbery. Where else had he been?

They turned the page again and there sat the artist. He had long wavy hair, it was impossible to tell if it was blonde or gray. He looked almost regal. It felt like a self-portrait that was just a little embellished. He wore a beret and a painter’s smock. This man looked like what Jonah thought medieval painters would look like, creating works of art like grand statues or famous landscapes.

“He took way too much time drawing that,” Eric chimed in.

“I know, right? It almost looks like a photograph.”

They turned the page and were greeted with the first full picture of the creature.

“Whoa,” Eric said.

And that was an understatement. The creature was a hairy beast from the neck down but with the huge sloping face of a caveman. Its huge arms were nearly to its large bare feet. It had enormous hands as well. Both the fingers and toes looked like they ended in sharp, almost talon-like claws. Jonah saw now that it would be easy for a beast like that to scale a tree with a bunch of wood and probably have no problem maneuvering around to build this place, but it honestly didn’t look smart enough to swing a hammer. He wondered just how much the others could communicate with each other if they taught this thing to be able to do that.

“That’s a Creature alright,” Eric said from over his shoulder. “Man that thing looks mean.”

“Don’t call it that,” Jonah said, still staring at the picture. It surprised him that he had verbalized the feeling.

“Um, alright,” Eric said comically. “I’m just going with what your guy said.”

“I know. Sorry.” Jonah said. “It’s just, I don’t think that’s what we should call it.”

“Well, the guy said they didn’t really have names. Are you supposed to name them?”

Jonah dropped the notebook and stood. He began pacing the room. Eric picked up the book and flipped back to the drawing of the guy from the television.

“I don’t know. Does naming them make any of this more real?” Jonah asked. “I don’t even know if I want any of this to be happening. And now I’m supposed to name these other people that are supposed to be me? How am I supposed to do that?”

“Listen,” Eric started, “I’m not even fully on board here, and I’m not going to be until you can try and do something. And I still think somebody is pulling your chain. But if it is real, I don’t think it’s going to get any less real. So, you’ve got some kind of thing against calling it the Creature…”

“Stop calling it that,” Jonah cut him off.

“Creature,” Eric retorted.

“Eric…”

“See,” Eric said. He flipped to the page with the drawing and held it up toward Jonah. “So name him.”

“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “He’s an ape-man. He’s a man-ape.” Jonah was searching for words. “He’s Adam, The Ape-Man.”

“Hey,” Eric said. “I like that. That’s not bad. Except I think he’s Atom, The Ape-Man.”

“Now we’re doing word-association?” Jonah asked. “What’s the difference?”

“No. I like it,” Eric said, looking at the picture again. “But doesn’t he look like a gorilla that got all kinds of busted up by a nuclear bomb?” He held the picture up again.

Jonah reluctantly agreed to that, but somehow felt it was still somehow a dig at the Creature. “I think we’re calling him Adam,” he finally said. And strangely, that sad feeling way down deep wasn’t there anymore.

Eric took the pen from the spiral of the notebook and wrote Adam’s name next to his portrait. Then he flipped back to the drawing of the man from the television. “Okay, who’s this guy? Einstein?” he asked.

“No,” Jonah said, still pacing back and forth. “Not really. There’s some of my dad in there too.”

“Okay. And your dad’s a scientist. So, he’s definitely a science guy.”

“Yeah,” Jonah agreed. “I guess. So he’s a science guy. He’s a super-smart-genius guy.” Jonah was searching again and then stopped and snapped his fingers and pointed at Eric. “He’s the Professor.”

“He’s totally the Professor,” Eric agreed, and wrote it down. He flipped to the devil. He still didn’t like him. Eric still associated him with his bad day at school. He’d helped, that’s for sure. There’s no telling what Logan would have done if he wasn’t stopped. But he was pretty mean, Eric couldn’t shake that. He held the picture up. “Next.”

“Red devil. He’s red. He’s a devil. He’s bald,” Jonah started pacing again and looking at the picture. He kept mumbling “devil,” over and over.

“You should call him Devlin, or something like that,” Eric said. “He seems like he should have a cool name like that, or something.”

“Devlin, cool,” Jonah said. He’d stopped again and looked at the picture.

“I mean, I think you’re supposed to name them. I don’t know that I’m supposed to get a vote.” Eric said.

“Dude, you’re in this as much as I am. This isn’t really something I want to be doing anyway. I appreciate the help,” Jonah said. Although this wasn’t quite true. Each name they came up with and wrote down seemed right somewhere inside of Jonah. It felt like pieces falling into place that he hadn’t quite realized were missing. He didn’t necessarily like the feeling. This was all real. This was what was happening.

“Last one,” Eric said, holding up the picture of the artist. “I’m not going to be really good at this one.”

“He’s an artist,” Jonah said. “He’s an architect. He built the tree-house, or made the plans for it anyway.”

“Who was the artist who cut of his ear?” Eric asked. “That guy was sick.”

“Van Gogh?” Jonah replied. “No. Not him.”

“Who’s the guy who painted Mona Lisa?” Eric asked.

 “Da Vinci? I think.” Jonah said.

“Leonardo Da Vinci,” Eric said, adding a fancy accent.

“No, that’s not right either.”

Eric stood up and unzipped Jonah’s backpack and fished out the tablet. There was one bar of internet service. He was going to start looking for names of artists, but got distracted wondering what wireless network it had picked up way out here, so he checked the settings. There was only one listed:
RngerStatn 402
. The tablet had picked up on a park ranger station somewhere out in the woods. It couldn’t be that close to here if it was only picking up one bar.

He went back to the internet tab and typed in ‘artists’. It took a minute or so to load the page with the low internet signal, but the response he got back was a huge amount of images. He scrolled down until he got to some text links.

There was one for art exhibitions, so he clicked on that. Fortunately, or not, it was a listing of exhibitions all around the world with pictures of some of their works. There were some familiar names, including the two they’d already passed on. They weren’t listed in any alphabetical order. He swiped his finger down the page and it went scrolling down. He put his finger back down on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at a random spot. “Michelangelo?” He asked.

“Still not there,” Jonah said, but there was something close. “How about just Angelo?”

Eric dropped the tablet and picked up the notebook. “He looks like an Angelo to me,” Eric agreed.

“Yeah, Angelo.” Jonah nodded.

“Okay. So do it now.” Eric blurted out, tossing the notebook aside after writing down Angelo’s name.

“I still don’t know that I can,” Jonah explained. “It’s got to do with the headaches. And I don’t have one right now.”

“The guy – the Professor,” Eric corrected himself, “said you could probably control it. He said it didn’t have to be in your head. He said you could move it to your hand.”

“But I don’t even know how to do that!” Jonah said exasperated. “I don’t know that I want that kind of pain in my hand! I don’t even want it in my eye!”

“Okay, so concentrate on not making it hurt anywhere.” Eric retorted.

That struck something in Jonah. There was something in what Eric had just said. He tried to put his finger on it and was just missing it. “Concentrate on not making it hurt?” He mumbled.

“I don’t see how you can do that, but then again, I doubt you can do any of it anyway.” Eric added.

Jonah picked up the notebook and the pen from the floor. He turned to a blank page. “Didn’t you just do a report on the central nervous system?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Eric answered. “The brain, the spinal cord, all that.”

“And how does pain travel though your body?” Jonah asked.

“Through nerves.”

“Exactly. You’re a genius, MacIntyre.”

“I don’t get it,” Eric said. “You’re going to concentrate on not having a nervous system? I don’t think you can function without one.”

“No. I just need to make myself believe that the last thing that will form is the nerves in the tip of my finger,” Jonah said, holding up his index finger. “He said that I get the headaches because the first and last thing my body does is change there. So I just have to tell it not to change there.”

Eric shrugged. This was going to be an interesting experiment if anything happened at all.

Jonah concentrated on his goal: The first thing to change and the last thing to change would be the nerves in the tip of his index finger. He looked at his finger. He stared at the spot. Then he wrote it down in the notebook four times.