Skippy Dies (41 page)

‘I don’t know what just happened here. But all those things I said before, about how you were a big fat fake and a liar, and
your portal was a piece of crap that couldn’t heat a bowl of soup, and you were gay and all scientists were gay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well… I was wrong. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ Ruprecht replies gallantly. With a nod, Dennis makes his sickly way out of the basement. Among the others,
this uncharacteristic show of contrition causes a brief flurry of concern, tied to speculation over the nature and desirability
of an irradiated or super-Dennis; but it is quickly lost in the excitement as Ruprecht primes the pod, this time with Skippy’s
wristwatch inside it, and invites them to lower their goggles again.

Verification, however, proves harder than expected. Enough power from the original radiation burst should remain, by Ruprecht’s
calculations, to facilitate a second teleportation; but while the pod hums as before, the cable overheats and the power surges,
the magical apex of the first experiment, that consecrated instant in which Optimus Prime was snatched away, never rearrives.

At breakfast the following morning the mood is greatly changed. ‘I just don’t
understand
it,’ Ruprecht says, staring into space and chomping his cereal disconsolately. ‘Why would it work perfectly the first time
and then every other time not work at all? It just doesn’t make any
sense
.’

To make matters worse, it appears that Mario’s phone for
some reason failed to capture the original successful experiment. ‘But
we
saw it, Ruprecht. We
saw
it.’

Ruprecht will not be consoled. ‘Who’s going to believe a bunch of fourteen-year-old schoolboys? They’ll say we dreamed it.’

Leaving his toast uneaten, he returns belowstairs to wrangle some more with his creation; as the hours drag by, it seems that
even two storeys up in their dorm, Skippy can feel his friend’s exasperation, the exuberance of last night bleeding away.
Did
they all just dream it? Was it just some kind of consensual illusion they’d conjured up from sheer boredom, like the others
said he’d done with Lori?

Dennis will have none of this. ‘That robot left that pod,’ he says, ‘and that is a fact.’

‘Okay, but even if it did work that time, what if he never gets it to work again?’

‘Well, Skipford, I’m no scientist, but I can tell you this: if anyone can open up a gateway to a parallel universe, it’s Ruprecht.’
Dennis is in his pyjamas on Skippy’s bed; he seems to have recovered from his dose of radiation-poisoning, and isn’t showing
signs of paranormal or any other ability, aside from a new-found and somewhat unsettling appreciation of Ruprecht.

‘He didn’t seem like he thought it was going to work again.’

‘That’s why he needs us to support him,’ Dennis says. ‘We might not know much about science, but we can help by believing
in him.’

‘You believe in him?’ Surprised to hear Dennis even use the word, Skippy turns momentarily from the computer.

‘Of course,’ Dennis says simply.

But Skippy – eyes darting involuntarily, for the hundredth time since lunch, to his unlit phone, and from there through the
window to the empty yard of St Brigid’s, like a grey showcase for the rain – is not so sure. What if the truth about other
worlds is that when they touch yours – through a gateway opening, or a perfect kiss – it’s only ever at a single point, for
a single moment, before the turning of the Earth drags you away again? What if
the world is not just a bare stage where magic sometimes but usually doesn’t take place, but rather a force actively opposed
to magic – so it doesn’t matter whether these other worlds, gateways, kisses, were dreamed or real, because either way you
will never be able to get them ba–

Wait –

‘Did you find tits?’ Dennis clambers up to peer over Skippy’s shoulder at the computer. ‘What is it – holy shit…’

Night falls. In the Junior Rec Room the legendary barbarian warrior Blüdigör Äxehand, a.k.a. Victor Hero, calls a timeout
from the fell Mines of Mythia, where he and the other doughty souls of Lucas Rexroth’s role-playing group seek the legendary
Amulet of Onyx, to take a bathroom break. He proceeds through the door and is passing down the corridor when he is descended
on by a large, Lionel-shaped mass.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t the Prince of Gays, off for his evening poncing.’

‘Get off me!’ Victor/Blüdigör shrieks, writhing uselessly under Lionel’s splayed, block-like knees.

‘Out hunting for kisses? How about a kiss from Uncle Lionel. Open wide…’ A huge gobbet of sputum unspools from Lionel’s mouth
to quiver just over Victor’s lips – Victor, revulsed, increases his thrashings, which only brings the mucus-pendulum swinging
closer. And then, soundlessly, the power winks out. Victor takes advantage of the darkness to scramble out from under Lionel,
who, rising in pursuit, finds his slaver pasted to his chin – ‘Damn it!’

‘Damn it!’ In the basement, Ruprecht, emerging from his tinfoil radiation-blocker, shines a torch through the smoking air
to peer into the crib. But there is Geoff’s shoe, exactly where he left it.

‘It didn’t work?’ Geoff, hopping over, isn’t entirely devastated to find his shoe still inhabiting this universe. He bends
over to retrieve it from the pod. ‘Well, it’s not the end of the world – I know, why don’t we try…’ His eyes flick around
the basement as he squeezes his shoe back on. ‘Mario, do you still have your lucky condom?’

‘Ha ha, no way are you putting that inside this foolish death-machine.’

‘But maybe its luckiness would help the experiment,’ Geoff cajoles.

‘I am not going to hand over my fail-safe secret weapon to some parallel-me in another universe,’ Mario says firmly. ‘He can
get his own bitches.’

‘Okay…’ Geoff’s eye sets to roving once again. ‘How about…’

‘What’s the use,’ Ruprecht cuts across him desolately.

‘What do you mean, what’s the use?’

‘I mean, it’s not going to work. Clearly what happened with Optimus Prime was some sort of fluke. Maybe the result of an external
factor we didn’t take into account, the position of the moon, the quantity of moisture in the air. It could have been anything.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you should just
give up
on it…’

‘Let’s just call it a day,’ Ruprecht says monotonously, prodding the charred computer keyboard with his foot. Sixteen hours
of repeated disappointment have etched themselves into his face, like an acute strain of the grey necrosis of disillusion
the others feel creep across them every second of every day, transforming them into adults.

‘What about the future of humanity?’ Geoff appeals; but Ruprecht has already turned his back and is shuffling geriatrically
around the room, shutting down the computers one by one, when the door bursts open and Dennis and Skippy come running in.

‘Hold everything!’ Dennis exclaims.

Skippy, who’s holding some sort of a printout, says that he was searching online for material for this punishment essay Ms
Ni Riain gave him, about the Gaelic origins of the name Seabrook, ‘and I found this site?’

The site is called
The Druid’s Homepage
, and purports to be
A Resource for Bards, Shamen, Mystics of Erin, and all those Seeking the Rituals of the Old Time
. ‘It’s mostly about Druids and making
potions out of leaves and stuff. But then in the middle of it…’ he scans down through the page ‘…
names can still give clues as to the whereabouts of these sacred sites, even in the modern
– oh yeah, here it is –
while Seabrook’s present Gaelic translation of “Siobruth” is a meaningless back-formation from the English, it is possible
that Seabrook, now home to a church and well-known school, may have its origins in
Sidhe an Broga
, pronounced ‘Shee an Brugga’ and meaning ‘Fairy House’. This is the name given to the cave-like chambered cairns referred
to in the Old Lore as the traditional homes of the Sidhe and the entrances to the ‘Other World’. The correct term for these
mounds is tumuli; they are frequently found, like similar sites such as Stonehenge in England and the Boyne Valley in Meath,
at the intersection of ley lines in order to harness the power of the grid of electromagnetic energy that covers the earth.
Many experts believe that these tumuli, created to astronomical specifications so precise they are still beyond the reach
of our most advanced computers today, were the work of a race of extraterrestrial beings who briefly made their home among
us and used them as gateways to travel through and outside the universe…
’

‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Ruprecht says.

‘Aliens, Ruprecht!’ Dennis chimes in. ‘The mounds were built by aliens! And there’s one of them somewhere in Seabrook!’

Ruprecht, wiping grease from his hands with a towel, merely grunts.

‘You think the mound has something to do with what happened to Optimus?’ asks Geoff.

‘Think about it for five seconds,’ Dennis says. ‘Remember what Ms Ni Riain told us, the old Irish legends, you know, about
this race of magical beings who lived in the countryside, only most of the time they were invisible? Doesn’t that fit what
you were saying, Ruprecht, about the higher dimensions, and how even though they’re right there we can’t see what’s happening
in them? Don’t those old fairy-stories sound like they’re describing people, or
something
, who know how to move in and out of the higher dimensions? And these mounds are the gateways they
built between our world and theirs, using their extraterrestrial knowledge.’

‘Poh, those stories are just stories,’ Mario says, ‘made up by drunk Irish people from days of Yore.’

‘Sure, that’s what I thought too, when I first heard them,’ Dennis says. ‘Like, why would a race of hyper-intelligent extraterrestrials
want to live in Seabrook? But after what happened last night –’

Ruprecht is not even listening any more; he has turned back to his clear-up.

‘– and then I remembered what happened to Niall’s sister…’ Dennis continues.

Mario and Geoff look at each other. ‘What happened to Niall’s sister?’

‘You didn’t tell me about her,’ Skippy says.

‘I didn’t? What happened down at the gym?’ Dennis shakes his head. ‘Well, that’s the most incredible thing. Niall’s sister’s
a fourth-year in St Brigid’s. She’s in the drama society, and she’s got a big part in the Christmas play this year?’

‘What play are they doing?’ Geoff asks.

‘
Oliver
.’

‘
Oliver
, in a girls’ school,’ Mario says disgustedly. ‘That makes like zero sense.’

‘Anyhow, she and this other girl have been staying behind after school to do extra rehearsals of their scenes. They use a
room down by the gym. St Brigid’s is a bit like this place, with a new part and an old part. The old part doesn’t get used
much any more. There’s a Latin room, and a room they use for sewing classes and stuff like that. And there’s also this other
room that’s always kept locked. If you ask the nuns, they’ll say it’s just an old storeroom, and that it’s kept locked because
the floor is rotten and it’s not safe to walk on. But there are all these stories about it too, like that a girl hanged herself
in there, or that one time a nun was cleaning ashes out of the fireplace when she saw the Devil coming down the chimney, so
they closed it off?’

The others are giving him their full attention now; even Ruprecht is dismantling machinery more quietly than he had been.

‘Okay, so one night a couple of weeks ago – it would have been about the same time as the Hop, I suppose – Niall’s sister
and her friend are down in their room, rehearsing. They get quite caught up in what they’re doing and they end up staying
down longer than they planned.’

‘This friend, is she hot?’ Mario puts in. ‘I have seen Niall’s sister, thanks but no thanks – however, how about the friend?’

‘I haven’t met her,’ Dennis says. ‘It doesn’t really affect the story either way.’

‘Yes, yes, carry on.’

‘Anyway, all of a sudden the two of them notice it’s got very cold. Like
icy
cold. So they decide to call it quits for the evening. They start walking back to the main door, when her friend grabs Niall’s
sister’s arm and asks if she can hear something. They stop right there and listen as hard as they can and Niall’s sister makes
out this very faint music playing. It seems to be coming from behind them. They look at each other. It’s after five and they
didn’t think there was anyone else around. They retrace their steps back down the hall. The music’s still really faint, almost
too quiet to hear, like it’s being played way off in the distance. But there’s no doubt where it’s coming from. The locked
room.’

The silence around the listeners seems to deepen.

‘Niall’s sister tells her friend to knock on the door. The friend says Niall’s sister should do it. Niall’s sister dares her,
so the friend knocks. No one answers. The music keeps playing –’

‘What sort of music?’ Geoff asks.

‘Beautiful music. Like with harps and stuff.’

‘Just like in the Irish story,’ Geoff says huskily.

‘Anyway, they knock and then they call out, “Hello, is anybody in there?” No reply. Niall’s sister reaches out and turns the
handle. It’s locked, of course. But Niall’s sister’s friend has keys. The janitor gave her a set so she could lock up the
spare room
when they’d finished rehearsing. She doesn’t want to try them, though. She’s afraid, she wants to go and tell one of the nuns.
But Niall’s sister knows there’s no way the nuns will let them hang around to see what’s inside the room. This is their one
chance. So they start trying the keys in the lock. There are forty keys on the ring. Not one of them fits. They try the last
one and then just stare at the door, totally flummoxed. They can still hear the lovely music, in fact it seems to have got
louder. Then Niall’s sister, without knowing why, reaches out her hand and turns the handle again. And this time the door
opens.’

Geoff, Mario and Skippy stare at Dennis moon-eyed, like three raccoons caught in headlights. From a distance, Ruprecht fondles
his asthma inhaler impassively.