The Storyteller (23 page)

“Ho, ho, ho,” he said when he picked up, which sounded a bit like an insult, but I don't think he meant it as one.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “For biting you. For being … bitchy. All the time.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “You weren't. You aren't. I'm sorry too. That's why—”

“It's beautiful,” I said. “I'm wearing it right now.”

“Oh. Good,” he said. “I thought it might be too … shiny?”

“It's a good shiny. A beautiful shiny. I'm sorry, but my present to you is … coming.”

Once I figure out what to get him, that is. Man, am I a jerk.

“That's okay,” he said. “I've got another present for you coming too.”

“No, Glen,” I said. “You don't have to do that.” Because he didn't. Because two presents basically puts more pressure on me to get him something extra special. Or
two
extra special somethings.

“Already done,” he said. “It's nothing, really. I didn't do much.”

More than me. So much more than me. I had to change the subject. “So how's your Christmas been?” I asked.

“Awesome,” he said. “I got a Sega.”

“So did we!”

Then we talked about games for a while and then we said Merry Christmas and then we hung up. It sounded exactly like a conversation between a girlfriend and a boyfriend is supposed to sound.

 

T
UESDAY
, 12/26/1989

MORNING

Dr. Hollister, Alistair's psychiatrist, must be a big fan of Boxing Day. In other words, she doesn't work on the day after Christmas. Or at least my parents can't afford to pay her to work on the day after Christmas. I heard Mom and Dad discussing it early this morning. Not everything they said, but certain words came up. Words like
disturbing
and
not working
and
new environment
and
coincidence
.

Coincidence!

They must have thought I was still sleeping, but I was in the bathroom, and sometimes you can hear what's going on in their bedroom through the vents above the sink. Not that you want to hear everything that goes on in their bedroom. Gross. Me. Out.

That girl in Nepal. Sunita. The Astronomer, right? That stuff about Charlie and Fiona. I know it freaked my parents out more than they'll admit. Coincidence is one thing but …

Magic. How about magic?

I knocked on Alistair's door again.

“Jenny Colvin?” I asked when he opened it. “Is she part of this? She helped bring this girl back?”

He shook his head and ushered me in. “It was me and me alone,” he said. “Well, not alone exactly, but…”

“So what we did, the call and tape and all that, it was useless?” I asked.

“The opposite,” he said. “Talking through things with you made me realize that Jenny and Chip and Dot were never going to cooperate. I am the Boogeyman to them. You don't cooperate with the Boogeyman.”

“So what did you do?” I asked as I flopped into the beanbag chair.

“I absorbed them,” he said. “I took what they know, what I know, and what the ones who came before me know, and I used that knowledge to extract Sunita from her creations.”

“Well that didn't take long,” I said.

He chuckled and sighed at the same time. Chighed? Shuckled? “Depends what you consider long,” he said. “Like I told you, time is different in Aquavania. It was hard and precise work, involving draining all of Sunita's figments of their memories of her, but keeping their bodies and other memories intact. Thankfully Chip and Dot had already gotten things started. So it only took a few decades.”

Decades. As in tens. Of years! I didn't even bother pressing for more information on that. I needed to know one thing. “And what about Fiona?” I asked. “She's next?”

“I'm working on it.”

“Mom and Dad are—”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

With a voice that threatened to go hoarse at any moment, he said, “They talked to me last night about my options for the future.”

“What?” I asked. “Like options other than Dr. Hollister? Something else? Something more?”

“Don't worry,” he said. “Things might change around here, but they won't stand in the way of what I'm doing. Their concerns will hardly be an issue once Fiona comes back.”

“And when will that be?”

“Soon. Or at least it will seem soon.”

“What about Charlie?”

“Charlie is another matter.”

The Sega Genesis was sitting, still in the box, on Alistair's dresser, next to that fishbowl. Now, I know Alistair has never been a huge video game buff, but he played them enough at Charlie's to have an appreciation for them. There's no doubt he knew how big a deal it was to have a Genesis. I can't think of a kid who wouldn't have at least plugged the thing in by now. But there it was, unopened.

I would have opened it and plugged it in myself, but it's been in Alistair's room since Christmas morning, and I'm not about to burst in and grab it. Which is yet another reason why I hesitate to disregard anything that he's saying. A boy who ignores video games is a boy with humongous things on his plate. I don't know if you could call him a boy at all.

Remember? Decades. As in tens. Of years!

“I hate that I believe you,” I said.

“I love that you do,” he replied.

“Tell me something,” I said. “When did it start? When did you first become the … Riverman?”

I've been rereading some of the stories I've written in the last month and some of the things I've been telling you, Stella. Even though Alistair has said there are different names for, well, this
job
he has in Aquavania, the name that keeps coming up is the Riverman. It seems the best name of the bunch, because who are we kidding? I can't very well refer to my little brother as the Boogeyman. I certainly can't call him the Whisper. That sounds like something out of a cheesy comic book, some supervillain who's always putting a finger to his mouth and shushing you before he does something dastardly.

“I became the Riverman on the night I shot Kyle,” Alistair told me.

I nodded. “So you did shoot him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn't who I am now,” he said. “I was a scared, confused kid.”

“And you became who you are now because of what?” I asked. “Because you shot him?”

He considered this, then said, “In a way. But I had the chance to become the Riverman a long time ago. I've had different holes in my life. Portals have opened for me before. That night was the first time I actually went through one and into Aquavania.”

“So the first time you went was barely a month ago?” I asked. “And yet you've been back and been there for … decades?”

“Centuries, actually. I inherited a big mess, a place full of monsters, and I had to clean it up. Took some time. But like I said, when I'm there, time stands still here. Since I'm the Riverman, I control when people from the Solid World get to come and go. Like the host of a party or the engineer of a train that people get on and off of, when I'm not there, no one else is either. Then it's Aquavania that's frozen.”

“So you could stop going to Aquavania for fifty years and no one else would get to go? And nothing would happen there?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Pretty much. Other Rivermen in the past have gone long stretches without calling kids to Aquavania. Everyone approaches the job differently.”

I pictured those wispy souls again, only this time, they weren't in cages at my brother's feet. They were in a train, a train my brother was driving. In this image, he had an excessively wrinkly face, like a withered piece of fruit.

“Okay, Methuselah, let's get it all out there,” I said. “You claim you absorbed Fiona and Charlie, as in, they're part of … your brain? So that's how you know private things about them? Their thoughts and memories, for instance? Like the things you said to Mom and Dad.”

“Exactly,” he said. “I did the same thing with Chip and Dot. And Jenny. I'm not
them
, really, but I can access their thoughts and feelings if I need to. I prefer not to delve into the personal stuff if I can help it. They deserve their privacy. They deserve some secrets.”

“You know, Mom and Dad will just think that Fiona and Charlie told you those things. Before they left.”

“I know.”

“So what's the point? If you're trying to convince them about Aquavania, then you're doing a craptastic job.”

“I'm not trying to convince them,” he said. “I'm trying to convince you.”

“I'm convinced, I'm convinced,” I said. “But why would that matter? How have I been any help? What have I done?”

“You've listened,” he said. “You've written things down. You will remember. You will tell the story.”

“Why do I need to tell the story?”

“Because one of the things that might happen to me is I might forget it.”

“How could you predict what you're going to forget?” I asked. “And how can I remember a story that I only know bits and pieces of?”

“Fair enough,” he said. “How much time do you have?”

I looked at my wrist, as if to check my watch. I don't wear a watch, so I shrugged and replied, “We're not back in school for another week.”

“Let me fill in the blanks,” he said.

And he did. Boy, did he. But I'll have to tell you about that later, Stella. And why's that?

Because I've got blanks to fill in of my own.

 

WORLDS COLLIDE

Princess Sigrid (remember her?) had a secret that no potion would ever make her forget. She didn't like being a princess, not even when she was young, at the age when she was supposed to be enamored of pink dresses and tiaras. Back then, long before her trusted advisor, Po (remember him?), had started putting a potion of forgetfulness in her evening stew (remember that?), she wished that she could live somewhere else, in another world where she could lead a simpler life.

Guess what? Someone, or rather something, could grant her this wish. Sigrid knew local legends that told of a horrible beast that lived in a forest bog and was called the Dorgon (remember the Dorgon?). This beast was a master of potions that could do almost anything you could imagine. Sigrid knew her parents would not approve of her visiting the Dorgon, and she knew her trusted advisor, Po, always reported back to her parents. And so, one foggy night, she snuck out of the onyx tower in which she lived, disguised herself as a peasant with a head wrap and a ratty dress, and she made her way alone to the forest.

Almost immediately, she found herself lost in the fog. When a wagon pulled up beside her, she asked for a ride.

“Certainly, miss,” said the driver. “What's yer name, if ya don't mind me asking?”

She climbed aboard, over a blanket in the back that covered a lumpy mass that she assumed was a fresh harvest of carrots and squash. “My name is … Henrietta,” she said.

“Tom,” said the man, tipping his hat and grinning widely. “Tom Rondrigal. Where might you be going?”

“You won't take me if I told you,” she said.

“Try me.”

“The Dorgon.”

Rondrigal cackled and took a sip from a bladder that hung from a strap over his shoulder. “Are you plannin' to kill me, then, so that you might toss me into that bog?”

“Um … no, sir,” she said. “Why would I ever?”

“Because if you're wanting a potion, the Dorgon will be wanting a dead body,” Rondrigal said, and he reached over and tapped her nose with a knobby, scabby finger.

“Oh heavens,” she replied.

Rondrigal cackled again. “You're no killer, I can tell that much.”

“What am I to do?” she said. “I need a potion.”

“You could sell me your soul,” he told her. “And I'll give you a dead body in return.”

Her soul? Could such a thing be for sale? Surely not, she thought. It wasn't a physical object, so how could someone else buy it? And after she was dead and gone, what use was there for it? Sigrid believed in science, not in an afterlife.

“That's all you'd want?” she asked. “My soul?”

“Yes, your everlasting soul,” he said. “You do realize this means that if I happen to perish before you, then I'll be taking your soul to the afterlife with me?”

“Fine by me,” she said. “It's a deal as long as the dead body you give me is already dead. I do not condone killing.”

Another cackle burst from Rondrigal's mouth, and then he peeled the blanket away from the back of his wagon to reveal a pile of dead bodies. Fish, reptiles, mammals … people. “Pick one,” he said.

Horrified, Sigrid reached in and grabbed the smallest thing she could find. A hummingbird.

*   *   *

A few hours later, Sigrid was collecting her potion. A hummingbird was usually not a large enough payment, but since Sigrid was a young girl, the Dorgon made an exception. “Drink this and you will go to other worlds, you will live different lives,” the Dorgon said as it handed her the potion. “It will be a difficult journey, so you best be prepared.”

“I am,” she said. “I'll do whatever it takes.”

“It'll take a lot,” the Dorgon said, and it slipped back into the bog without another word.

Sigrid asked Tom Rondrigal to bring her back to the spot where he'd found her, and he happily obliged. “Enjoy the potion,” Rondrigal said as Sigrid hopped down from his ghastly wagon. “I'll be enjoying your soul.”

Then he took off into the fog, cackling as he went.

*   *   *

Back at the onyx tower, Sigrid climbed into bed and took a sip of the potion. “Another life,” she whispered. “Another world.”