Duck Boy (18 page)

“Clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock,”
he whispered into the darkness. Nothing. He repeated the transforming words.
Still nothing. He tossed the photo album to the far corner of his room, near
his overturned bed and slashed mattress. Steve’s hand patted the floor sifting
through debris looking for another object to test. He had a small idea of what
he was looking for. He found a small die-cast car and experimented with it.
Nothing. He crawled around on the floor experimenting with anything he could
find for what felt like hours. Finally, he decided to take a break.

He stopped and walked into his dad’s bedroom to check on the police car. It
still sat there. He could barely see the car with the blowing snow, but the
car’s marker lights somehow burned holes through the storm.

After his short tour through the house, he returned to his room, dropped to
his knees and began his search and experiment again. Item after item.

What else could it be?

He stood and wiped his sweaty forehead. The room was cold, but Steve’s body
burned with energy. He took off his hat, put the hat in the pocket. He glanced
over to the far corner of his room. A mirrored plaque hung over his bed. His
mother had given it to him a few years ago. He crossed the room to read the
familiar words:
Fear thou not, for I am with thee.

He remembered the day she had given it to him. It had been hers when she was
a little girl. That day when she had placed that plaque in his hands his mind
had connected with all that his life had been and all that his life was going
to be. For a short moment, when he held it that first time, he could see
everything.

Steve knew in an instant what was his greatest fear. His mind buzzed with
excitement as he removed the plaque from the wall and held it in his hand.

“Clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock.”
The little alarm clock shook in his hand. He felt his arms go numb and vibrate
as if he were gripping a high-voltage wire. The energy throbbed from the hand
holding the mirrored plaque to the hand holding the clock.

The power. There’s so much power.

The clock flattened into what looked like a transparent piece of paper, a
picture of a clock. Despite Steve’s best efforts the clock dropped from his
hand onto the floor. A giant ripping sound filled the room, followed by a
brilliant kaleidoscope of light. A tight vortex of wind swirled around room.
And then it all stopped. That familiar earthy smell filled the now-warm room as
Steve stood staring at the dark floor. He bent into the darkness and groped the
floor and found a metal lump. He lifted it into the storm’s weak shimmer—it was a lock.

The light.

Steve rushed to his dad’s room to check on the police car. The police lights
now flashed. He couldn’t make out whether the doors to the car were open or
whether either police officer still sat in the car. But they’d seen the light
thrown from the clock as it transformed, and they knew someone was in the
house.

Steve ran for the back door. He needed to find some place where he had
access to a dictionary. There weren’t any left at his house—both had
disappeared, one with his mom, the other with Aunt Shannon. He tore through the
kitchen and tripped over a burst bag of flour, and the plaque dropped out of
his hands and slid across the darkness and debris covering the floor. Steve
scrambled up and chased it down. His hands fumbled through the wreckage on the
floor.

He heard someone’s fist pounding on the front door, which probably meant
that someone was coming around the back to make sure he couldn’t escape through
the back door. His hands felt the smooth polish of the glass plaque. He scooped
it up and headed back into the depths of the house.

The attic. I can get out from one of the attic windows.

He grabbed the spring-loaded ladder from underneath the attic entrance and
pulled it down—it unfolded automatically. Up the ladder he moved, pushing the
attic cover away from the opening. He crawled inside, pulled the ladder up into
place behind him, and slid the cover back into place. The mirrored surface of
the plaque shimmered faintly with the storm’s pale glow .

I’d better put this in my bag if I’m making a run for it.

He placed it inside and tied the mouth of his backpack closed, then re-shouldered
the pack.

Where do I go now?

One of the attic dormer windows—his escape. He inspected it, opened the
latch. But he didn’t want to be on the roof when the police constables were
still in the front yard. They would catch him too easily. He had to make sure
they were inside the house.

He waited noiselessly, listening for clues to where they were. He could hear
nothing but the muffled howling of the winter wind. He returned to the window
and cracked it open, and a knife of frigid air jabbed his hands. He heard a set
of feet on the floor below him. He backed away from the window.

Suddenly he felt an arm in a heavy wool coat grab him around the neck,
lifting him off the floor.

“You will want to come with us, if you want to see your uncle and your girlfriend
alive again. Mr. Gold wants to see you,” said a hoarse whisper. The arm was
thick and steely—no chance of escape. It clamped down on his throat, making
Steve gasp for breath. Down below, there were sounds of police officers
scuffling through the house.

“Let me get my Benu stone,” Steve rasped. “I will come with you after I get
it.”

The man loosened his grip on Steve’s throat and that was all Steve needed.
He slid under the man’s arm and ran towards the window, slammed it open, and
dove onto the snowy roof. He tobogganed over the snow-covered shingles and off
the roof, tumbling on a snowdrift under the eaves on the front lawn.

He struggled to his feet in the deep snow. Then he ran for all he was worth.
He heard some kind of commotion behind him, but he didn’t bother to check it
out. He just ran.

Up the street and down another alley. It took him a minute or two of careful
looking to get his bearings again. The storm was burying all that was familiar,
and it took a good hard look to find anything recognizable.

He ran for about two blocks. It was hard to say for sure because the blowing
snow boxed him in on all sides like a prison cell. His fear of being captured
kept him running into the snowy maze, with no way to know where he was going.

Steve ran for half an hour, ignoring his draining energy. He hadn’t had
anything to eat for hours. He slowed to a walk and began to trudge through the
snow.

His thoughts labored as if they were stuck in a storm, too. The white pixels
were merciless, shapes and faces appearing to him as he trudged. His mother’s
face appeared and winked and blew away. Aunt Shannon, looking around nervously,
drifted before him. Then a worried, stressed man. Dad.

Snow blustered down the collar of his coat and stung him with sparks of cold
pain. As he trudged, he lost his sense of direction entirely. He couldn’t see a
fence, a house, or a light. He tripped over a wire cable, strung around some
kind of park or parking lot.

I’ve heard of people dying in storms like this.

Steve focused and cursed the wire as he stood, kicking it with snow-filled
shoes. His feet were so numb with cold that he couldn’t feel the pain from
kicking the post. Sleep. Sleep was all he wanted. He stood and trudged on. His
coat hung open and he staggered on through the storm, not knowing or caring
where he was.

“How do I find another transformation?” His head felt light, like it was
slowly turning. “Lob blob. Gag bag. Ring gring.” he said to himself, his mind
trying to pair words that might work the same way as lock and clock. “Snow
knows?”

Steve watched his thoughts fly apart and lose their direction.

Very entertaining.

Steve almost laughed aloud.

Pieces don’t make any sense.

It was about that time that he realized he was in trouble. In a lucid moment
he realized his body was very cold and that he probably had hypothermia, or was
close to it. He couldn’t see any lights from any buildings or cars. There were
no buildings or landmarks, just snow. Snow on the ground, snow in the air—snow
everywhere. With his last remaining bits of consciousness, Steve did up his
coat, pulled Walter’s hat out of his pocket and put it on his head, and donned
his gloves.

He wandered without sense for quite a while, until he almost hit the side of
the some kind of building. He was no more than a few feet away from it before
he could see it at all. As he moved closer to the building, he recognized it.
The odd brickwork on the outside meant he had somehow found his school. He put
a gloved hand on the wall and began to walk around the outside.

Not much time.

He found a window he could reach, and smashed it with a gloved hand. It
shattered. He almost climbed through the window.

The shards.

Around the edges were sharp glass teeth. He pulled a few out, so he could
enter the building without cutting himself and bleeding to death.

He lay on the floor, frozen and exhausted. The occasional gust of snow
through the shattered window melted on his face.

Chapter 15

He may have dozed. Or slept. He came to some time later, feeling a little
more like himself. He rolled from his side and crawled further away from the window.

I need heat.

The radiator at the back of the room nearly scalded his fingers when he
touched it. He lay on his side with his back against it. Another little
nap. When he awoke again, he felt much better.

The brightness of his walk in the snow made the shadows of the schoolhouse
extremely dark. It was quiet, too.

He could hear the wind moaning outside, begging him to step into the storm
again. Sometimes snow whispered and rattled against the windows. He walked
hesitantly up the hallway. His footsteps echoed up the corridor. All the
classroom doors were closed.

He walked to Mr. Pollock’s room and opened the door, stepped inside, and
closed the door behind him. His stomach growled, echoing inside. He checked the
clock above the chalkboard: 2:15 a.m.

Steve removed his backpack, pulled his notebook and plaque from inside.
Stepping through the shadowed shapes of desks, he moved towards the classroom’s
windows to catch some of the storm’s pale light on his notepad. He struggled to
angle the pages in just the right way. The handwriting looked like chicken
scratches, unreadable.

A fist of wind rattled the windows. The hiss of snow against the glass grew
louder. The storm wanted in. But the school defied the winter storm.

Though the shadows wouldn’t let him read, he wrote. He recorded, as best he
could, the experiment he conducted that led him to discovering his Benu stone.
He set his notebook with the others in his bag and swung it onto his shoulders.
He held the plaque and moved towards the front of the classroom.

Steve stepped up to Mr. Pollock’s desk. He swept his arm over the top of the
desk to clear the desktop entirely, pushing the items on the desk onto the
floor, including the picture of Mr. Pollock’s wife. Steve grinned.

Sorry, Frown. Owed you.

He moved behind the desk and sat in Mr. Pollock’s chair. He placed the
plaque down on the center of the desk. The plaque’s blue-mirrored face winked
with the pale glow of the storm. His heart began to hammer in his chest as
though it would break through.

Steve swiveled the chair around to face the bookcase. Mr. Pollock kept a
large dictionary in his shelves, and a pocket one.

“Pocket dictionary, please and thank you,” he said to the shelves.

He selected the dictionary from the middle shelf and placed it carefully on
the desk. He then swung his backpack to the desktop and slipped the large
dictionary inside.

Might need backup.

Steve replayed the transformation he had caused earlier at his house, and
remembered that he had a hard time holding the clock as he changed it into the
lock. So, to be cautious, he removed his Benu stone from the center of the desk
and placed it in his bag, too. Then, gingerly, the pocket dictionary, too.

This might be the last thing I ever see.

The blue of the storm bathed the room in shadow and a cold glow.

How depressing.

“Dad,” he said to the silence, “I’m going to try to help us.” Not that his
dad would ever hear those words.

He looked around the classroom slowly, for perhaps the last time. He looped
the strap of his backpack firmly around his left arm. After a deep breath, he
plunged his hands into his backpack, grabbing the plaque and the dictionary at
the same time.

A powerful numbing shot up both arms and into his body, causing him to yelp.
He struggled with the numb feeling, fighting to keep a hold on his plaque and
the dictionary. A blinding spiral of light exploded in the dark classroom.
Steve could see everything with absolute clarity. The room seemed to flatten
into a photograph. The photograph shrank and shrank until it was the size of a
regular snapshot. The wind blew papers and dust around the classroom, but Steve
only watched the wind—he couldn’t hear or feel it. Finally, the picture of the
classroom began to fall, like a photograph, landing on the ground where he was
standing. When it hit the ground, it vanished.