Nikolas and Company: The Merman and The Moon Forgotten (10 page)

Grand nearly circumvented the Earth
over the next week. He only left the cloud line to eat and use the
bathroom. Most of the conversations consisted of Tim saying: “We
need to go back.” “Mom and Dad might be dead.” “What’s going on,
Grand?” But Grand remained tight-lipped about their parents. In
fact, Grand said very little to the brothers. What was said
consisted of: “What will you be eating for breakfast?” “Time for
bed now.” and “Think we’ll see the Himalayans in the
morning.”

As always, it wasn’t what Grand said to
them that mattered, it was what Grand said to himself. Three days
into their globe-trip, they stopped off at a Mumford’s
electrostation in south of Wales to let Tim use the bathroom and
recharge the hover. Two paces back, Grand was mumbling to himself,
“Mustn’t let them know what I’m thinking, Huron. Keep ‘em confused.
Break the scent.”

Huron?
Nick thought to himself as he walked inside the food mart to
buy a candy bar.
Grand hears the same
voice?

“Psst,” Tim called Nick over, having
just grabbed a bag of Sour Powers.

“Yeah,” Nick said.

“What’s wrong with Grand? Is he
getting, you know, Alzheimer’s?” said Tim.

“No,” Nick shook his head. “Grand is
incapable of illness.”

Tim gave a withered look. “Dude. I know
you think he’s the patron saint of awesomeness or something, but
Grand’s mind’s all screwy. He keeps talking to himself.”

“We can drop you off at the nearest
daycare if it makes you feel better.”

“Just saying that I’m having major
doubts about Grand’s psychological stability.” Tim snatched a bag
of jelly beans. “Don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

“He told us to wait; we
wait.”

“Since when did you heed an authority
figure?”

Nick shrugged.

Grand was the only adult Nick had ever
heeded, which makes sense, since Grand was also the only adult that
ever scared him. It was like someone had taken Aragorn, William
Wallace, Conan the Barbarian, and mashed them into their
grandfather. What do you say to a person like that?

Truly, they never had had the average
grandfather-grandson relationship. Grand never celebrated national
holidays with them, or Christmas for that matter. He never sent
them e-cards with e-money. Grand would send real, physical letters.
They were twenty pages long, recording his whereabouts and
archaeological activities across the globe, giving full details of
the local aviary, with samples included. Bat wings. Parrot beaks.
Eye and talon of a Sulawesi serpent eagle. It took Nick hours to
read the letters because he spent most of the time
cross-referencing between Grand’s words and the
e-dictionary.

Also, Grand never came groundside, so
he never saw where the brothers lived or went to school. He always
insisted they meet at a Cappumulus, which was the only coffee shop
franchise with restaurants two miles in the air. More times than
not, Grand would carry a large axe into Cappumulus, plop it on the
counter, and order a large triple espresso, no syrup, no sugar, and
no whip. Then he’d fire up his pipe and set off the very sensitive
smoke alarms. Most of their coffee sessions were Grand grilling
Nick and Tim, asking if they had enrolled in any sword dueling
classes or at least metallurgy. How many stanzas of poetry had they
memorized in the last week, or had they learned to fell a wild
animal with their bare hands yet? Tim explained that there were no
wild animals within twenty miles of the city limits. Nick reminded
himself to download all the books he could on W. B. Yeats and sword
fighting.

Yes. Grand’s eccentricities unnerved
Nick, but it was the very reason Nick trusted Grand. He was as real
as they came.

Grand wasn’t a drone.

h

Finally, after another two days of
hopping between electrostations and elevated restaurants, Grand
nodded to the ground and said, “That’s about long
enough.”

He punched in a new
location:
Grace Church of Colorado
City.

“Church?” Nick said.

“You typed it wrong, Grand. We want to
go to St. Mary’s,” Tim said.

“It’s our last chance before they
cremate the bodies.”

Tim sat up. “Cremate? Mom and Dad are
dead?

h

Before the truck could even come to a
complete stop, Grand jumped out, reached behind the seats of the
cab, and pulled out two antique blowers—the kind their mom and dad
kept by the fireside next to the poker and ash scooper. Of course,
they never used them, since the fire was only a
hologram.

Grand took several long strides to the
top of the stairs and pulled open the doors. The cobalt blue foyer
smelled like a hundred years of perfume, dutifully marching in and
out every Sunday.

“They really are dead,” Tim whispered,
choking back tears.

Grand reached for the sanctuary
door.

“Wait,” Tim protested. “You can’t just
march into a funeral service. We’re not even dressed for
it.”

“Erik and Sonya are in there. I am
responsible for them.”

“Responsible for them?”

Grand opened the door a crack. An
air-conditioned breeze and speaker’s eulogy slipped
through.

“. . .will be missed. Sonya
was also a good person, a beautiful person. She was a woman in the
prime of her days, with so much left to give to society. She liked
shopping, the reality show,
Laguna Beach
Girls
and—”

Grand flung the sanctuary doors
open.

“Grand . . .” Tim covered his
face.

The speaker, a thin man whose scalp
majored more on skin than hair, tracked the great, old man marching
down the aisle.

“Testimonies will be after the rap
duet, Mister?” The speaker waited for a response he would never
get. Grand walked straight to the closed caskets and flipped the
lids back like playing cards.

The audience inhaled.

“Grand is insane,” Nick
laughed.

Grand grabbed their mom by the collar
and slung her over his left shoulder. He turned a full revolution,
her blond hair sweeping around.

Adult voices shouted. “Sonya! . . . Oh
no, he’s grabbing for Erik, too!”

Teenage voices joined the commentators.
“Awesome—No way! That old dude ripped the lid right
off!”

Grand heaved their dad onto his other
shoulder. He turned to the audience, paused for a moment to steady
himself, and then offered his own parting words, “Carry
on.”

The bodies swayed in beat with Grand’s
march up the aisle.

“Linus! Say something,” a woman hissed
from the front row.

Linus’ expression could be described as
cadaverous.

“Linus!”

“Um—I’m, well, er. Yes, yes. Er—Erik
and Sonya have gone to a better place—”

“
Linus!” she
hissed.

“Well—well, what I mean to say is . .
.”

Grand rolled the bodies to the
ground.

“What’s going on?” Nick closed the
sanctuary doors.

“
They’re dead!” Tim pulled
the locks of his hair. “You just hauled our dead Mom and Dad out of
a funeral service—in front of everyone!”

“First, they’re not your parents.
Second, they’re not dead.” Grand rolled their dad onto his stomach,
his nose crunching into the blue carpet.

“Not dead?” Nick looked to
Tim.

“They should be, grant you that.
Trackers put enough poison in their diet sodas to kill a herd of
gwinters. But these are mimes.” Grand looked at the very confused
boys. “Duplicates, copies. They do appear dead to any modern
physician. Nearly on the brink of it, I would imagine. But these
particular ones happen to be very difficult to kill. I should know.
I bred them that way.”

“Bred?” Tim mouthed.

Nick could only stare at
what Grand claimed were copies of his parents. Sure, there were
moments he prayed they were not his parents. Especially when he
invited a bunch of friends over one afternoon to play some holobox,
and there was his mom doing her Kenpo routine to Baby Gangsta’s
platinum soundtrack,
A Tale of Two
Cribs.
Still, wishing and beholding are two
different things.

“Daniel?” Tim stood up. “Daniel
Kobayashi?”

There stood Daniel leaning
on his cane. His hairless, questioning brow said what his mouth
could not,
“What the heck is going
on?”

“What’re you doing here?” said
Nick.

“It’s your parent’s funeral,” said
Daniel. “Should we not be in attendance?”

“But they’re not your parents,” said
Nick.

“Are we not friends, Nick?” said
Daniel.

“Sure . . .”

Daniel cleared his throat. “Anyway,
Caroline insisted we attend. Said you two needed the support of
true family during such a loss.”

“Oh. My. Gawsh!” Brandy stood in the
doorway wearing a black dress, thin black veil, three-inch black
heels, and a matching black purse.

Haley pushed herself around Brandy
while Xanthus flanked the left. All were dressed uniformly in
black, and all were completely dumb struck by Grand’s body
snatching.

“Tim, Nick.” Caroline cut through the
growing crowd. She flung herself at Tim and then wrapped her other
arm around Nick. Her hands were rough and smelled of pie
crust.

“I was so worried.” Caroline stepped
back. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Nick said.

“Close the doors,” Grand
growled.

“That dude just yanked your dead
parents from a funeral,” Xanthus said, wide-eyed, as he watched
Grand push their mom’s nostrils up, pull her lips open, and smell a
handful of hair.

“What?” Haley said. “Hospital short on
cadavers?”

Grand twisted to Haley, then
Nick.

“They’re my friends—” Nick put his
hands up. “—from the refugee camp.”

“Where’ve you two been?” Haley sided
around Grand.

“Everywhere,” Tim said.

“Police couldn’t find you,” said Haley.
“Doing the vanishing act after your parents were poisoned wasn’t a
great idea. They interrogated all of us, even Rocky the She-Bully.
You know she didn’t have nice things to say about you, Nick. Told
them you were a violent psychopath who burned down forests and
punched pretty girls in the mouth.”

“We didn’t kill them,” said Nick.
“Besides, they’re not dead. Wait. What did you tell
them?”

“Nothing.” Haley rolled her eyes to
Grand who had his ear to their dad’s palm. “Should we
have?”

“Seriously,” said Xanthus. “What’s with
William Wallace?”

“That’s Grand. He’s my grandfather. I
told you all ab—”

“Nick, Tim.” Grand waved them over. “We
need to store them away. Cannot be lugging them all the way to
Huron. Bring me the pressers.” Grand pointed to the two antique
blowers.

Screams peeled from the
sanctuary.

Xanthus, nearest to the sanctuary,
turned and peaked between the foyer doors.

“Merciful Minerva!” Xanthus turned to
Grand. “Bunch of animals chased the pastor off stage.”

“Like a bear?” said Brandy.

“No, it’s, um . . .” Xanthus
fumbled through his trench coat, mumbling to himself. “Sci . . .
sco . . . sce . . .” He pulled out a book titled,
Perlock’s Mythological Bestiary:
30
^th
edition.
It looked abused beyond use.
He quickly undid the rubber band and started flipping.

“Long neck . . . wings behind ears . .
. I believe it’s a . . . yeah. Scucca!” Xanthus held the book up to
Grand.

“Trackers?” Grand shoved the kids aside
and placed bluish hands against the foyer doors. “This was a
trap!”

“Article needs to be seriously updated,
though.” Xanthus held the book to his nose. “Scales are more
heather blue. My bestiary is pretty dated. I prefer the books over
the tablets. Just found them more honest to the source material . .
.”

Sounds of a wooden object skidding
across a stone floor came from the sanctuary. The screams
doubled.

“Dude,” said Brandy. “What’s with your
grandpa’s eyes?”

With palms leveraged against the door,
Grand’s eyes once again turned blue, and a blue smoke crept from
his hands.

“It’s his jynn’us,” said
Nick.

Glass shattered.

Grand turned his glowing eyes on them.
“To the truck, all of you. And take the bodies with you,
Nikolas!”

Nick couldn’t move.

“Now, Nikolas!”

Boom.

Grand rocked back. The sanctuary doors
were pushed open and then closed. The sounds of a clogged vacuum
hose came from the other side.

“Reeiihh!!” A creature sounded the call
of recognition and rammed into the door again. Then, it pushed.
Grand slid backward. Veins ribboned his neck as he tried to keep
back whatever was pushing the doors apart.