As grandpa lay on his side in the fetal position, whimpering and willing himself to be reborn, Amity snatched up a bucket in which a dozen freshly cut roses stood. She swung it at the woman, scattering the flowers and the few inches of water that sustained them.
The pail met the spade-wielder’s head with a sound like a cheap bell, staggering her but not rendering her unconscious. She dropped her weapon and weaved away toward the birdbath, where she leaned with both hands on the rim of that bowl, as if dizzy.
Amity grinned at her father, a rather wild-eyed manic grin, and he grinned at her as he snatched up the spade. He threw it over the wall, into the neighboring yard, where the kneecapped man was no doubt still lying at the bottom of the empty pool and wondering why he’d thought that it was a good idea to rush to the service of the nation.
A weird exhilaration overcame Jeffy, a motivating astonishment that he and Amity, having been cast into this maelstrom of mortal threats, were proving so quick and competent. Like characters in one of the fantasy novels they enjoyed. He was a guy who restored old radios a
nd yearned to live in the past, a guy whose wife walked out on him, and Amity was but a slip of a girl, yet they were alive and free when by now they should have been captured and in chains. Their daring and spirit inspired him to believe they could handle this, split this dismal America, and flash across the multiverse to their own and better world.
The harpy turned from the birdbath and came at Amity as if she would claw the girl’s eyes out. Jeffy interceded, snared the woman by her cardigan, spun her around, and shoved her facedown into a bed of red and purple primulas. He’d never imagined that he could treat a woman so roughly, let alone one old enough to be a grandmother, but he’d also never imagined that he would encounter a homicidal, geriatric champion of a police state.
“You are the goat!” Amity declared.
For an instant, Jeffy indeed almost felt he was the greatest of all time, father and stalwart defender. Even though his fear did not in the least relent, his confidence swelled. Perhaps dangerously.
The barrier between this property and the next was not a wall like the one that he and Amity had scaled only a minute earlier, but instead a wrought-iron fence in front of which grew periwinkle and Cistus and golden candle and holly flame pea. Before they could even consider clambering over it, however, two policemen appeared in the neighboring yard. One of them had drawn his pistol.
On his hands and knees, the crotch-kicked man growled as he tried to get up, and his wife spat out primula petals.
A fence at the back of the property featured a gate to an alleyway where a black van now glided into view.
They couldn’t flee to the street in front of the residence, because that was where some vehicle with a loudspeaker continued to blare warnings about enemies of the state.
Men in black were getting out of the van in the alley, and the police in the next yard were rushing toward the wrought-iron fence, and a long soft peal of thunder rumbled through the lowering sky.
Jeffy grabbed Amity’s hand. They ran along the path through the English garden, across the patio with its white-painted wrought-iron chairs and hanging baskets of flower-laden fuchsia, to the back door of the house. They simply needed to get out of sight, find a haven that would provide fourteen seconds of privacy in which to switch on and use the key to everything.
They went inside. He slammed the door and twisted the thumb turn on the deadbolt to lock it.
“Where?” Amity asked breathlessly.
“Upstairs,” Jeffy said. “They don’t know we can just teleport out of here, or whatever it is the key does to us. They’ll search down here, which will give us all the time we need.”
“I hope there’s not a mean dog,” she worried as they crossed the kitchen toward a swinging door that no doubt led to the ground-floor hallway.
“There won’t be a mean dog,” Jeffy promised as he pushed open the door, and in fact there was no dog, though waiting for them was the meanest member of the family.
22
At first it had been possible to think that 1.13 was pretty much like the world from which they had come, except that here the economy was limping along, and there was a freaky cult whose members dressed in black with stupid-looking knitted caps. But almost minute by minute, the differences mounted until it became impossible to predict what weirdness might wait around the corner or, in this case, in the downstairs hallway. In his book, spooky Ed Harkenbach said there were an infinite number of parallel universes, worlds side-by-side but invisible to one another, each different from the others in lots of unpredictable ways. Infinite differences meant that if you were using the key to everything, you had better be prepared for some upside-down inside-out ass-backward situations. Amity had lost track of this truth. Daddy, too. Which was understandable when you considered all the crap and crazies they’d had to deal with since the black-clad bozo in the library declared that Snowball did not qualify as an approved pet.
Following Daddy as he hurried across the kitchen, Amity reached into the right pocket of her denim jacket to reassure her passenger mouse, who had ridden out the recent action with aplomb. He cuddled into her palm appreciatively.
Grandpa and Grandma Satan hadn’t left any lights on when they had gone outside to work in the garden. The day wasn’t bright enough to chase all shadows from the kitchen. Now sudden sheets of rain battered the windows, and the room darkened further.
The swinging door creaked, and they went into a hallway even gloomier than the kitchen. They halted when they realized they were not alone.
The boy stood where the hall met the foyer, an archway to the right of him, stairs to the left. Backlit by watery, gray light that issued from the windows flanking the front door. A silhouette with no detail. His shoulders were slumped, his posture peculiar, somehow menacing for such a small figure.
Daddy felt the wall to his left, found a switch, and flicked on a pair of frosted ceiling fixtures, providing just enough light to reveal something that chilled Amity to the bone and for a moment left her unable to draw a breath.
The shoeless individual standing at the end of the hallway wore a uniform like the one young Rudy Starkman had worn, with a breast patch featuring a wolf with radiant yellow eyes. Whatever this thing might be, however, it for sure wasn’t an ordinary boy like snotty, snarky Rudy. It looked more like a chimpanzee, in fact a lot like a chimpanzee, although not entirely. Its brow wasn’t as sloped as that of a chimp, its eyes not as deeply set under a prominent brow bone, the nose not as flat or the jaw as forward thrusting as that of an ape. The creature seemed to be more of a chimp than not, with long arms and short legs and thick black body hair and finger-length toes, but its long-fingered hands were less roughly knuckled and less curled than those of a chimpanzee. Its deeply disturbing facial features were frightening and pathetic at the same time, really and truly, suggesting a human child in chimp makeup. No ape in a zoo cage had ever turned a face with such human qualities toward those who came to be amused by its antics. Amity remembered The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells, where animals with human qualities had prowled the jungle, and she shuddered. Her teeth chattered, they really did, if only briefly.
This apparition stood about four feet tall and weighed ninety or a hundred pounds. If it was an exotic species of chimpanzee, its costume was bizarre. Some people put sweaters and funny hats on dogs or dressed them six ways crazy for Halloween. Maybe this was that kind of fun, but it felt different, like cruel mockery, as though someone meant to make fun of the Justice Wolves or else of this man-monkey hybrid. The beast seemed to pose with self-conceit, much as snarky Rudy Starkman had taken pride in his silly uniform, as though it believed it was admired and possessed authority.
“Maybe here is good enough,” her father said, taking the key to everything from his pocket.
Before Daddy could switch on the device, the chimp-boy took three quick steps toward them and spoke. “Who is it you? Who is it you? Where dada-mama?”