Last Stop (6 page)

“ ‘Home,’ ” I said. “There it is again.”

“Who’s this AP?” Heather asked. “And what’s ‘shuffle off mortal coil’ mean?”

“Don’t you know? You’re the genius.”

Heather shrugged. “Sounds like language from some other century. Your dad never said stuff like that.”

“True. I guess AP did, though.”

AP.

It hit me.

I picked up Heather’s voicephone. “Heather, you
are
a genius.”

“Who are you calling?” Heather asked.

I tapped out my home number.

“Hello?” came Mom’s voice.

“Mom, what’s Anders’s last name?”

“Pearson,” I heard her say. “Why?”

Heather was right next to me now. I turned to face her. “Did you say
Pearson
, Mom?
Anders Pearson
?”

Heather looked blank for a moment, then beamed.

“Yes,” Mom said. “Why?”

“Ask her how he spells it!”
Heather hissed.

I covered the receiver.
“Why?”

“David, what’s going on?” Mom’s voice asked.

“Um, Mom, how do you spell that? P-E-A-R—?”

Heather grabbed the receiver and put her own ear close to mine.

“No, David,” Mom said. “It’s
P-E-R-S-S-O-N.”

I thought Heather was going to faint.

A. PERSSON.

He’s smart.

That’s why we need him.

I
MUST HAVE READ
the back of Miles Ruck-man’s business card a dozen times as we left Heather’s apartment and raced down the stairwell.

“Anders was sending a message to the other world,” Heather said over her shoulder. “The message was ‘Hi everybody. Wish you were here.’ And Ruckman was supposed to deliver it.”

“But he dropped the card,” I replied.

“Right! So you believe me?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

We pushed through the door to the eighth floor.

Anders lived in 8B. I pressed the doorbell.

“Rrraoogllf,” crackled a voice from inside.

“Mr. Persson?” I shouted. “It’s David Moore. Alan’s son?”

The door opened a crack and a bloodshot eye peered out. “Yeah?” Anders said.

“Did you lose this?” I handed him the business card.

He looked at it briefly. “Nope.”

The door began to shut, but I stuck my foot in the opening.

“What about the other side?” Heather said.

I turned the card over and pointed to the handwritten message. “You wrote this, didn’t you?”

“So?” Anders growled.

“Miles Ruckman dropped it,” Heather said. “What did the message mean? ‘Hi everybody, wish you were here’? Where was he taking it?”

“To his office,” Anders replied. “Now, go away.”

“But he’s gone, isn’t he?” Heather asked. “And you’ve been to his empty apartment.”

“I will call the guardians!” Anders cried out.

“Did he shuffle off his mortal coil?” Heather blurted out. “Like you wanted David’s dad to do?”

Anders let his door slowly open. A thick, musty smell wafted out of the apartment, like old socks and moldy potatoes. “Shakespeare,” he muttered. “How do you know—?”

Heather poked me in the ribs. “Tell him where you found the card, David.”

“In the Granite Street station,” I said. “On the platform.”

“What were you doing there?” Anders asked.

“That was where Miles Ruckman dropped it,” Heather replied.

“A few days ago, while I was riding the train home, it stopped there,” I explained. “The platform was full. Clean and all lit up. With posters on the wall. Miles Ruckman was in the car. But when the door opened, he walked out. He was holding the card, as if he wanted to give it to someone. Then the door closed and the train took off. And…and I saw my dad.”

Anders’s restless eyes were now steady and bright. “You saw your dad. And on your way to him you picked up Ruckman’s card.”

“No. I stayed on the train. I picked up the card on another trip.”

“Another trip…” Anders looked from me to Heather.

Heather was grinning with triumph. “So? Talk to us?”

Anders let out a giggle. Then, in a sudden burst, it became a loud, wild cackle. “You must think I’m awfully stupid.”

With that, he slammed the door shut.

Good
.

M
Y ARM WHIPPED INTO
the swiftly closing crack.

“Go away!”
Anders cried.
“I don’t believe you!”

“Open it!” I yelled in pain.

“Let go!”
Heather screamed, ramming her shoulder into the door.

It swung open.

Anders was backing into the room. “You’re wired for sound, aren’t you?” he asked. “You’re taping me. You’re going to play it for the U.S. marshals!”

Heather shot me a confused glance. “We don’t know what you’re talking about, Anders,” she replied.

I heard the click of a lock down the hall. A neighbor’s opening door.

We stepped into Anders’s apartment. The door swung shut.

Anders had backed in as far as he could go. His home was one small room. Everywhere I looked—the floor, the furniture, the windowsills—lay piles of old clothing, half-empty containers of food, open books, yellowing newspapers. The windows were shut tight and the smell was overpowering.

Heather grimaced. “Yuck.”

“You’re trespassing!” Anders shouted. “I’ll call the pugs.”

“Anders,” I said, “we just want to ask you questions—”

“Is that what they told you to say?” Anders barked a desperate laugh. “What a cliché. Like an old World War Two movie. Did they show those to you for training? In between European literature lessons? What else, huh? Spy novels? Rich culture, ain’t it?”

He was gone. Out of his mind. His words made no sense.

“Let’s go, Heather,” I said.

Anders had pressed himself against a dirty wall, covered with old strips of tape that no longer held anything. “Your dad’s one of them now, isn’t he? That’s why he wanted me to cross over. And now he went and hired you two. Maybe Ruckman, too.”

“Hired?” Heather repeated.

“He’s crazy,” I whispered.
“Come on!”

“It’s an act,” Heather replied.

“Or maybe you want to throw me into an asylum,” Anders continued. “Is that it?”

“A what?” I asked.

“Asylum, loony bin, nuthouse—” Anders burst out laughing. “Of course, you don’t know the idiom!
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Rings no bells, eh?”

“Uh…no,” Heather said calmly. “Mr. Persson, look, we’re not…whatever you think we are. David has seen into another dimension, that’s all. It happens. The problem is, he can’t see it anymore, but he wants to, because his dad is trying to speak to him.”

“Tell them they’ll have to take me back dead. Give them back their money. It’s worthless here anyway.” Anders stumbled across the room and opened a dresser drawer. Reaching behind a mass of wrinkled underwear, he pulled out a stack of bills and held them out to me.

They were a funny shade of green, like play money.

Out of curiosity, I took one bill and examined it. The design was intricate, but I didn’t recognize the portrait in the center.

“Maybe I can help, Mr. Persson,” Heather pleaded. “I want to see this other world. I’ve tried, but I can’t. What do I have to do? I mean, do you technically need a relative who lives there, like David has? Or did David just happen to see it at just the right alignment of time and space or something—you know, like a parallel world that only happens, like, once every hundred years, and now it’s too late?”

She was as crazy as he was.

“Heather, let’s get out of here!”

“Do you need passage—is that what this is all about?” Anders pulled three small, odd-looking coins from his drawer and held them out to Heather. “Here. If I give you these, will you go?”

Heather took one and held it up to the light. “ ‘Good for one fare,’ ” she read aloud. “These are some kind of subrail tokens.” She looked curiously at Anders.

“Yes,” Anders said with a wild smile. “And they’ll work. If you’re meant to use them.”

“How do you know if you’re meant to use them?” Heather asked.

“If they work!” Anders howled with laughter.

Looking at Heather, I raised an impatient eyebrow. “Now?”

“Oh! Oh!” Anders was gasping to control his hilarity. “ ‘What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ ”

Heather nodded. “Now.”

I pocketed the tokens and the money, and we both left, letting the door slam behind us.

Anders’s hysterical howls followed us down the hallway.

We never thought of the tokens.

We’re not perfect.

F
EET.
P
OUNDING THE PAVEMENT.

Voices. Battling inside my head.

He’s insane.

But he was Dad’s friend.

A filbert who lives in filth, spouts nonsense, and collects play money.

But he knew the place Dad called “home.”

And we were taking him seriously. Running to the subrail station like little kids. To test what he’d said. About the tokens. About the other world.

It was worth a try.

No.

“Heather, why are we doing this?” I called out.

Heather was already a half block ahead of me, bounding down the subrail stairs. “Hurry!”

I followed her. Against my better judgment. Against logic. Against every instinct. Knowing I’d face nothing but frustration.

But I couldn’t help it. Hope, that dormant little germ, was waking inside of me. Infecting me.

I’d forgotten what hope felt like.

If Anders is right, the pieces of the mystery fit.

I could not get that idea out of my mind. Because if you thought about it, Anders’s wacko story explained Dad’s journal entry.

“AP” was wanted for a crime. That would account for all the money—Anders stole it and somehow slipped into our world. And when I said I’d “seen” Dad, Anders freaked out. He thought I’d crossed to the other world, too—and met some pugs there, who sent me back with a secret tape recorder to help catch him…

Moore, you have lost it. Dad was insane himself when he wrote that stuff. The journal was nonsense!

Dad lived in this world.
This
world was his home.

And why even
think
of trusting Anders? Who was he, anyway? For all we knew, he could have been a serial killer. Maybe he was luring us to the Granite Street station. Maybe he kept his victims there. Under the platform.

Maybe Dad was one victim. Then Miles Ruckman. Now us.

Heather was at the rotary gates now, looking around for me as people bustled by her.
“Where are the tokens?”
she pleaded.

“Heather, I have a problem with this,” I said. “I mean, what if this whole thing was made up? What if Anders—”

“Just give one to me!” Heather demanded. “Your problem, David, is that you
doubt
too much!”

I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled out one of Anders’s tokens.

Totally the wrong size. I knew it. Too small and too light.

I dropped it into the slot.

It rattled downward. I quickly pushed the metal rotary gate.

It didn’t budge.

With a feeble clink, the token landed in the coin return slot.

Rejected.

Can we get him back?

We still have a few tricks.

I
AM DREAMING, AND
in my dream I am riding the Green Line. Calmly. After that experience with Heather at the rotary gate today, I am much wiser. Now I know that my vision of Dad was just that. A vision. It is perfectly, rationally explainable.

It was caused by power of suggestion. Months ago, I must have heard Dad talk about the station. I must have heard him tell Mom about his imaginary “home.” I wasn’t conscious of hearing it, but the words stayed in my mind. And months later, after Dad was
g
one and I was under stress, the image appeared to me. As for the blue business card, it had probably been lying on the platform for ages. Crazy Anders must have thrown it there. I probably saw it many times without taking notice
—
and it worked its way into my fantasy, too.

Simple.

I will definitely major in psychology in college.

So in my dream, as I’m reading my newspaper, I don’t even look up when the Granite Street station approaches.

Not even as the train begins to slow down.

Only when the lights go out do I peek out the window.

And there’s Dad. Waiting outside the door. Smiling. Looking totally healthy.

The door slides open. Nobody is moving or noticing, just as before.

“Come,” Dad is saying. “Don’t doubt.”

I try to get up. But I can’t. My arms and legs are frozen.

I open my mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a moan.

Now Dad is beginning to fade. “I will come for you,” he says.

“D
—
D
—”
Nothing. My mouth is locked.

“Alan…ALAN!” It’s Mom’s voice. She’s in the train, too! I turn to her. I want her to stop Dad from disappearing. I try to plead with her, but
—