Jonah Havensby (30 page)

He put the pen back into the spiral of the notebook and then tossed the notebook aside. He moved into the center of the room.

“I still don’t know if this is going to work,” Jonah said. “I’m kind of scared.”

“Come on, Hell Kat, show me the magic,” Eric said, sitting back on the hammock, then he sat up again. “Can you turn into Hell Kat? Cuz that would be pretty cool if you could.”

“I don’t think I can change into Hell Kat,” Jonah said with some disdain. “I don’t even know how I can change at all! This is stupid. I don’t want to do this.”

“And that’s probably why nothing is happening,” Eric observed.

Eric sat on the hammock with his arms crossed.  Jonah stood in the middle of the room with his arms stretched to either side. His hands opened and closed and opened and closed. It was like he was trying to will something to come and take him. Finally, he stopped and looked at Eric.

“How am I supposed to do this?” He asked.

“Talking to the wrong guy,” Eric retorted, and then shrugged. “Ask who wants to come out and play.”

Just as soon as Eric had said it, Jonah let out a bark of a yelp and his head spun towards his left hand. It was in that instant that Jonah had become completely immobilized, his body went rigid in his pose with his arms out and his head turned. Eric stood up.

The skin of Jonah’s hand turned red. Not a sunburned red. Not like he had just burnt his hand, but the red of a shiny, ripe apple. It started in his index finger and seemed to devour his normal skin color as it darted down his finger and around the rest of his hand. When it had completely overtaken the hand and started up his wrist, Jonah turned his face towards Eric.

There was a look of surprise on his face, if not outright terror, but it didn’t last long. Jonah made a gurgling noise and Eric watched in shock as his best friend’s body folded in on itself. It was as if Jonah was melting right in front of him, but melting wasn’t exactly the right word for it. It looked to Eric like Jonah was a sand castle and someone had just come by and smashed their hands into him. Jonah’s form just disintegrated and the remaining sand poured into a heap on the floor like someone broke an hourglass and poured it out.

This new mass, the pile on the floor, looked exactly like wet sand, like a wave had hit the beach and left a dark brown surface. Some of the sand caught the rays of the afternoon light and glistened, just as sand on a beach would. But this was far from being a calming scene by the ocean.

The puddle of sand roiled and bubbled like something was just below the surface, sections of it spiked upward and then fell back down. There was a rustling sound as it moved against the wood floor, but it wasn’t trying to move in either direction, it looked like it was trying to move vertically.

And then just as fast as his friend had disintegrated, a new form rose from the sand.

Eric saw red calves form, red knees. He saw the beginnings of black shorts, a red torso. The sand which fell into a wet puddle on the floor now looked like it was being sucked up through the legs of this new form into the shape that was emerging. And Eric recognized the shape as it grew.

Eric’s brain wrestled with the facts: he had just seen his friend dissolve into wet sand, his friend was an alien with many different forms, and the Red Devil was coming. None of it really registered consciously, it was more of a buzz in the back of his head. It was almost like a bunch of electricians were busy re-connecting crossed wires somewhere back there, trying to figure out which realization was more frightening.

 And then there he stood. The Red Devil. In his black shorts and long, black suicide coat. The tail arched out behind him with the arrowhead-like point bobbing just above the smooth, bald, red-skinned head.

He was in the exact same position Jonah had been in, his arms stretched wide, but his head was down. When he raised it, Eric saw the deep black eyes. Eric thought for a moment that the Devil had a mischievous smile on his face, but with the black eyes and the red skin, it looked more scary than playful. And then the devil hissed through his gleaming white teeth.

Eric’s body finally allowed him to register what was going on.  He barked out a small scream of surprise and backed up, but fell over the camping hammock. He didn’t seem to care, as his eyes were locked on the Red Devil.  He crab-walked in terror all the way to the back wall, and tried to back up more.

The Red Devil dropped his arms, rounded his shoulders a few times, and then cracked his neck. He looked directly down at Eric.

A zzzip cracked the air. And, all of a sudden, the Devil was no longer standing in the middle of the room, but right in front of Eric, its face almost nose to nose with him.

It looked Eric’s head over, his face bobbing from right to left. Then it stopped. Once again they were practically nose to nose. “Boo!” The Red Devil said quietly.

Eric screamed again and tried to climb over the generator which was just to his left, but from his seated position, he just managed to bang his shoulder into it.

The Red Devil stood up and literally howled with laughter. A booming sound that filled the entire tree-house. Then it bent over double clapping his hands and still laughing.

“Ow!” He yelled and grabbed his left hand, then shook it out like he was trying to shake the pain away. “That hurts! We’re gonna have to work on that!” He flexed it open and closed a few times.

“You’re…You…You’re,” Eric sat in the corner by the generator stumbling for words.

“You…You’re..You’re”, the Red Devil said mockingly. “Yeah, dude. Deviln. We’ve met.” Then he rethought. “Oh, I guess not officially. Manners.” He straightened his coat and then made a broad stride toward Eric with his hand out. He took Eric’s hand and then helped him to a standing position and then shook Eric’s hand in both of his hands. “Devlin. At your service. Darn nice to meet you, Danger Boy.”

“Danger Man,” Eric said distantly, not really believing he was defending the position.

Devlin let his hand go and then belted out another stream of laughter as he headed for the heavy punching bag hanging in the corner of the room by the television. “I’ll be the judge of that, Danger Boy.” He turned back and looked Eric up and down. “And, um, no.” Then he began hitting the bag with quick rabbit punches.

“Wait,” Eric said. “How do you even know…?”

“What? The whole code-name thing?” Deviln cut him off. “You’re friends with the boss. I know a lot of stuff. If you’re friends with the chief, I get the important stuff.”

Eric’s brain asked him if ‘Kat Skratch’ ranked as ‘important stuff’, and he side-stepped the issue.

“So you know Jonah?” Eric asked.

“The chief?” Devlin asked, he stopped and turned toward Eric, but that tail that seemed to have a mind of its own took over and started slapping at the bag, the arrowhead point sometimes spiking into it without creating holes. “Sure I do. How could I not. He’s the boss, the big man, Mister Big-Stuff.”

Devlin had walked too close to Grouchy’s pet carrier. The raccoon banged its head against the caged front and hissed and barked. Devlin turned and hissed right back through his teeth with an ugly sneer on his face. The raccoon immediately retreated back into the shredded newspaper and went silent.

“I hate that little rat so much,” Deviln said. “If Adam hadn’t…”

“Wait,” Eric interjected. “You know Adam?”

“The big ape?” Devlin asked. “Sure. I mean, kind of,” he corrected himself. “Kind of like knowing someone from leaving messages on an old answering machine.” He pointed towards his brain. “Kind of like a little back and forth. Does that make any sense? You should ask the Professor about that. The egg-head is better with all that stuff. You wanna take a stab?” He asked turning back towards to punching bag.

“No,” Eric said a little too adamantly, as if Devlin was interrupting the conversation with trivialities. It was weird enough that Devlin knew his own name, but the fact that he was dropping the others’ names like they had always existed was a little too much.

“Alright, Danger Boy, suit yourself,” Devlin said.

Eric’s hand flew out and pointed right at Devlin. “A. That’s enough of that,” He was clearly getting annoyed with it, he was used to being the snarkiest one in the room.

He shot out a second finger in Devlin’s direction, “B. So you all know each other and you all know Jonah?” It was a question and a statement at once.

Devlin turned. His tail snaked out and grabbed the hammock that Eric had knocked over making his way toward the wall. It righted that hammock and pulled it in Devlin’s direction. “Look at Danger Boy, putting on the big-boy pants,” he said as he sat down. Eric frowned.

“Okay, sorry,” Devlin said putting his hands up defensively. He sat up straight and slapped his hands on his knees. He was going to be an attentive, good boy from now on. “Yes. We are all kind of aware of each other, but we all kind of know the boss more. It’s like, the boss made us, so we all know why and what he wants, but the others are like friends-of-friends-of-friends.”

“So why didn’t Jonah know any of you, or anything about this?” Eric asked.

“Well,” Devlin started, “the Professor was the first, or, he thinks he was, I don’t even know if he knows for sure. And that was about a year ago. The professor didn’t even manifest until about a few month ago, but he says he was aware before that.”

“Manifest?” Eric asked.

“Manifest,” Devlin answered. “It’s the Professor’s word. It’s like, we’re kind of aware all the time, like watching a fuzzy television, but then we can ‘manifest’. Like, we can come on out.” He swept his hands up and down in a ‘here I am’ presentation.

“And the Professor said you only came out when Jonah really needs you.” Eric chimed in.

“Sure. I mean, sort of. I was around for awhile. I mean, aware. But I didn’t manifest until the boss met this incredibly hot girl named Jenna. The chief thought she was really pretty and he wanted to be all impressive and show her he wasn’t just some homeless urchin. He’s really worried about what people think of him.” Devlin stopped and put his hand over his mouth like he was telling a secret. “You didn’t hear it from me,” he whispered.

Eric rolled his eyes.

“Anyway. I wanted to help the boss out, so, bam! Here I am! I go looking for the girl, run into a little gas station robbery…Dude that was timing! She so wanted me after that.”

Eric almost wanted to remind him that the girl in that robbery was still probably completely freaked out by him, but, again, his smart mouth fought the impulse.

“But you guys are just pieces of Jonah, right? You can’t just like, come out and take him over forever right? Or is that wrong?” Eric asked.

“No. We can’t take the big man over forever,” Devlin said, as if this were something any of them would ever consider. “First of all, the chief is pretty tough, so I don’t think any of us could get away with that.”

“But he was here for two days…” Eric began.

“Special circumstances,” Devlin said, putting his hands up in a guilty-as-charged way. “The big guy got quite a shock back there in Clapton. The big ape ran him back here through the woods and then the Professor made his little speech on the camcorder, and Angelo wanted the place to be totally done. Besides, the Professor thought the chief could use a little downtime to process everything and, even though the boss wasn’t conscious of it, he wasn’t up for fighting it either.”

“But the chief has shut us down before, whether he knew it or not,” Devlin continued. “I mean, I really wanted to punch Logan’s face into the floor at the mall, before the chief gave me the smackdown.”

“So that was you trying to get out. The headache that time?” Eric asked.

“Yeah. The only reason I got to the playground was because the boss really was pretty concerned about what that toolbag might do to you, so he really didn’t have the concentration to fight me on it.”

“But you know you can’t really just bust out in public, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, “Devlin answered. “The Professor set up two rules; one is that we could only manifest if the chief was asleep, so he wouldn’t know, and two, only if he was alone. I kind of broke rule one that day, but I at least aimed the chief into an alley, so I felt good about rule two.”

“Is the Professor in charge of everybody else?” Eric asked.

“Kind of, but not really. He’s more like a kind of gatekeeper guy. It’s like he’s been around longer and he seems to know more stuff than the rest of us, so it’s better if we kind of touch base with him and ask his opinion.”

“Why not ask Jonah?”

“Well, the big guy didn’t know anything. The Professor said that’s the way it should be until the chief knew what was going on. I mean, the chief almost had a heart attack just now, and he was freaking out about us leaving him notes. Can you imagine if we started itching at the back of his mind? He really would have gone over the edge.”

Devlin stood up and clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Speaking of, the big guy’s kind of itching for me to let go.”

“So you can feel him?” Eric asked.

“Like I said, he’s a hard dude. That’s how we know it’s time to give it up.” Devlin held out his fist. “Next time we’ll go a couple rounds on the bag?”

Eric was reluctant to punch Devlin’s fist, but he didn’t necessarily want to offend him either, so he did it. “Alright,” he agreed.

“So, he’ll know it was me this time, but he won’t know all the details.” Devlin said. “You’ll fill him in?”

“Defintely. Yeah.” Eric said, because that’s what the entire interview was for anyway.

“Cool,” Devlin said, as he sat down in the hammock again. “Later, Danger Boy.” And then he laughed again, but the laugh was stifled by a choke and then a cough, and then he froze. The process repeated itself, although this time there was no partial change – his hand did not become like Jonah’s. Instead, Devlin’s body just folded in on itself and dissolved into the dark wet sand.

Since he was sitting, the large mass of sand expanded into the hammock. Eric could see that it roiled and moved both above and underneath, like something reorganizing just under the surface.

Once again, as fast as it started, it was finished again. Where Devlin sat just moments ago, Jonah now sat, wearing the same clothes he had on when he dissolved. He looked exactly the same as when he had left. Eric instinctively thought that there would be at least some sort of change in him, but there wasn’t. He was put back together exactly.