The Only Ones (10 page)

“I suppose not,” Martin said.

“You want a comfortable life here?” Nigel asked. “I can make sure you get that.”

“I just want answers,” Martin told him. “Information.”

Nigel paused. He patted the doorjamb with his hand in a slow, steady beat. “I’ve been told that you’re a hunter,” he said.

Martin considered his response for a moment. “I … I … trap animals, but only for survival.”

“Animals eat animals!” Nigel announced with a final, triumphant drum to the wood. “That’s nature. Animals are delicious. I eat animals. Not friends, of course.”

Martin wasn’t sure whether to laugh. He chose to nod.

“Wait here,” Nigel said. He ducked around the doorway for a moment.

Leaving was an option. Martin thought of calling out that he was feeling ill, and heading for the door. It wasn’t that Nigel wasn’t acting perfectly nice. He was. Something was just weird.

Before Martin could say a word, Nigel appeared in the doorway again. Instead of his mug of tea, he had the head of a deer in his hands. The head was not connected to a body.

“Dismemberment bothers some,” Nigel said, finally stepping into the room. “Let the squeamish starve. Can’t kill or dress an animal? Perhaps you shouldn’t be eating it.”

Noses took to the air as Nigel walked toward Martin. Blood dripped from the head and left a trail across the floor. Some of the dogs were quick to lick it up. Nigel presented the head to Martin, who took it because he figured he didn’t have any other choice. It was still warm.

“Thank you,” Martin whispered.

“Boris!” Nigel yelled.

The dogs stopped licking the blood and all the animals’ heads shot up in attention. Their ears stiffened. They sniffed the air. In the other room, there was a steady click that was building to a crescendo.

Like that, the animals were on their feet. Behind Martin, there was another doorway. A mad rush to that exit ensued. Within a couple of seconds, the only ones left in the room were Nigel, Martin, and the head of a recently departed deer.

Until Boris joined them.

Boris’s face peeked through under Nigel’s armpit and Nigel gave him a squeeze around the neck and a healthy pat on his furry chest. Boris snorted through his giant black nose in appreciation.

“A Russian circus bear,” Nigel said proudly. “He
can
balance on a ball, but he would prefer not to.”

“Are you joking?” Martin said nervously, looking down at the deer’s head in his arms. His lap was now soaked with blood.

“What?” Nigel said. “I don’t joke about circuses. They’re too insulting to the dignity of these majestic beasts.”

“He’s dangerous, Nigel,” Martin pleaded.

“Only to you,” Nigel said, raising his arm and letting Boris go. Boris sat down on the floor next to him, but he didn’t take his eyes off Martin.

Martin thought of tossing the head across the room, then making a dash to the back exit and joining the other animals, but his luck with racing bears was sure to run out sooner rather than later.

“Do you have faith in me?” Nigel asked.

“I …?”

“Boris and I have a deal,” Nigel went on. “As long as you sit in that chair, he won’t lay a paw on you. Then, at the end of our session, Boris gets that tasty head. But if you get up …”

“He …?”

“Do you have faith in me?” Nigel said again, his voice now serious. He took a step to the side, leaving Boris to his own devices. Boris remained still.

“I do,” Martin said. Regret choked every inch of him. What had he agreed to?

“Fantastic, then. Everything will be fine,” Nigel said, flopping himself down on the love seat opposite Martin. “Ask away.”

Martin assumed that if he didn’t look at Boris, this would be easier. So he concentrated on Nigel, who had planted his hands behind his head and appeared the picture of comfort on the love seat.

“What should I ask you?”

“Anything,” Nigel said.

“Okay, then. Ummmm … what happened on the Day?”

Nigel sighed. “Always the first question. Answer’s obvious. They all left.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Where they ended up.”

“Where did they end up?”

“Where we’ll meet them.”

“We’ll see them again?”

“Well, yes. Though not all of us will.”

“Why are you being so vague?”

“Your questions are vague.”

“Are they dead?”

“No.”

“How do we find them?”

“I think you know that.”

“I don’t think I do. Why don’t you tell me?”

“You’ll use your machine,” Nigel said without missing a beat.

Martin just about dropped the head. Boris reared back to pounce.

“Careful there,” Nigel warned.

“I—I … How …,” Martin stuttered, gathering himself and getting a firmer grip on the head. “How did you know about the machine?”

“A little bird told me,” Nigel said, and he clucked his tongue.

“And the address? Do you know about that too?” Martin asked. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but he was now even more scared than he’d been when Boris entered the room. Boris seemed to sense it too and let the tip of his tongue peep out between his teeth.

Nigel nodded. “I know about the address. But you’re not going to find what you’re looking for there.”

Martin paused. His sinuses began to throb, and he
reached up to rub his eyes, but he stopped when he realized his fingers were covered in deer blood.

“Faith,” Nigel said. “It gives back, doesn’t it?”

“It …” Martin lowered his hands.

“Time to go,” Nigel said.

“I have more questions,” Martin said quickly.

“Didn’t you learn enough for today? Besides, Boris is hungry.”

Martin turned his gaze back to Boris. The bear lifted himself from his sitting position and opened his mouth. The low rumbling growl, a sound Martin had last heard in the library, made the room shiver.

Martin tried to joke. “I think I would have preferred it if you’d brought the tiger.”

Nigel smiled and shook his head. “No you wouldn’t. There’s no bargaining with that tiger. Now give Boris the head. He kept his promise.”

With that, Martin flung the head to the bear. Boris was quick, springing to his feet and catching the head in his jaws. As the bear tore into the flesh, Nigel motioned with his chin, coaxing Martin to stand up.

Slowly, he did. Careful not to slip on the blood and flesh that were now being strewn violently across the floor by the overly enthusiastic Boris, Martin tiptoed to the exit.

PART II

“Give him a push? We’re still talking about intergalactic travel, right? Or is it swing sets?”

“You can joke if you want. I’m simply telling you what needs to happen.”

“And I’m simply reminding you that a girl with a quick wit is a girl who gets things done. Nothing to worry your furry little heads about.”

“We don’t worry.”

“Of course you don’t. So tell me. Is this the guy right here?”

“The guy?”

“Who bit the doctor? Poisoned my B?”

“It is.”

“Relay a message for me. He’s a real snake.”

“Not exactly. See the legs?”

“Whatever.”

“Anything else?”

“As a matter of fact, there is. What do you make of this? Do you know what it does?”

“Of course.”

“So? What does it do?”

“Whatever you want it to do.”

I
t was impossible to sleep. Martin threw out his bloody clothes, wrapped himself in covers, and searched the house for a pencil and paper. Something had been roused in him. He couldn’t fathom how Nigel knew about the machine, but honestly, he didn’t care. The machine suddenly mattered again, to one person at least. That person was a slightly sadistic boy who got his information from animals, but he was also a boy who looked to the future. So few in Xibalba did.

Martin quickly found a sketchbook in an upstairs bedroom, but he couldn’t locate a pencil anywhere. Sparked by a memory, he descended into the basement. He hadn’t been down there much. It was the dollhouse that bothered him most. It imbued the basement with a strange, almost holy significance, though the exact nature of it was impossible to decipher. Of course, Martin knew whose basement this had once been, whose house in which he had chosen to
live. The others reminded him of it daily. Some shrugged it off as coincidence, but most seemed committed to a cautious unease. Whenever he told one of them his address, eyes sent him the same message:
Who the heck do you think you are?

Martin thought he was a person who would change things. At least, that was what he thought now. He needed a pencil to prove it.

The coffee table in the basement had a thin drawer. Martin pulled it open. Just as he’d remembered from the last time he’d snuck a peek inside, there was a pencil sitting atop an instruction booklet about how to build an ant farm. When he snagged the pencil, he knocked the instructions to the side, revealing a book beneath them.

Martin set the pencil down on the table and fished the book out. It was a small leather-bound book, not much bigger than a pack of cards. It had no title on the cover, but what it did have was a sticker, the same sticker Martin had seen on the trail on his way to Xibalba. Skull, crossbones—the Jolly Roger. Martin opened it to the first page, where he found an inscription, written in ghostly graphite.

He nearly dropped the book. This was a diary. This was
Kelvin’s
diary! Outside of the Internet, it was nearly impossible to find information about Kelvin. People rarely wanted to talk about him. Yet here was an unedited view into his mind.

Doodles of knights, monsters, curvy women, and aliens dominated the opening pages. The first entry was only a couple of sentences.

After that, the entries were longer, but not by much. And there were no indications of when they were written. They were simply a series of thoughts and observations, scribbled out dusty and quick.

That was where it ended. Martin checked the binding for remnant bits of paper. He ran his fingers across the blank pages, feeling for indentations. He searched for anything that might indicate there had once been more to the diary. It was a worthless endeavor. This was all there was. A few pages of writing and nothing else. Still, the last entry, the last words, struck him hard.

When the morning arrived, it found Martin sitting at the kitchen table, sketching. He hardly left his chair that day. By evening, his notebook was full, and he began tearing pages out of it and stuffing them in large envelopes. With a Magic Marker, he wrote a name on each envelope. Then, weary and a little nervous, he put the envelopes under his arm and left the house.

He went straight to Sigrid’s. When she opened the door, she was wiping sweat from the back of her neck with a hand towel.