Dark Times Read online

  I was sitting cross-legged in the dust a few yards away from the van, munching a sandwich, when Raven honked the horn. I turned and looked to see her pointing into the distance. “Bag it all,” she seemed to be saying. I couldn’t really see anything except a cloud of dust. I walked back to the van and got her to roll the window down. “What are you saying? Bag it all? Cat is full? Pack the call?”

  “ATTIKOL,” she said, and my heart went cold.

  Well, cold-ISH. I mean, Attikol is TECHNICALLY my ancestral enemy, and if he ever got his hands on the liquid black rock, that would be bad news. The thing is, he’s not really all that bright. In fact, as far as I know, he has no clue that I’m his ancestral enemy, or what black rock is. And I need to keep it that way.

  He does happen to have some tough (if excessively well- dressed) henchmen working for him. Not to mention Jakey— that kid is psychic enough to read pretty much everything that’s in your head at a glance. But the henchmen don’t think for themselves, and the kid and I are kind of buds, and on top of all THAT, Attikol has a terrible crush on my golem. . . . Still, I’m a little worried about what he’s doing out here. Last I saw him, Raven had banished him from Blackrock for all time.

  What is bringing him back again?

  Let’s hope it’s something innocent and dumb, like, he just sort of forgot about the banishing. Not something sinister and threatening, like, he now suspects that Blackrock is hiding the source of his ancestral power.

  His caravan should be here in a few minutes. Have decided fleeing the scene is not the best plan, since they may have already seen us. Also, would very much like to know what the hamcakes they are doing here. Am settling down to wait.

  Later

  Am back in the van, headed home, and trying to get a grip on what has happened.

  Here’s what has happened:

  The caravan arrived. Raven was outside, ready to greet them. I was hunkered down in the van with the cats, not sure if it was a good idea for me to come out, hoping Jakey would signal me somehow. I watched through a peephole as the trailers pulled up; people started getting out, stretching their legs, looking around at what used to be a small town and was now just dust and dust and dust. In a few minutes, Attikol came forward and approached Raven. There was some conversation that I couldn’t hear. I didn’t see Jakey anywhere . . . if he wasn’t here, what was I going to do? Stay hidden and hope that Raven would be able to extricate herself without my help?

  “Jakey,” I whispered, hoping he was close enough already to sense my thoughts. “I’m in the van. Can you—”

  Then I saw the eyeball.

  The eyeball slowly backed up until I could see the rest of Jakey’s face, smiling at me. WHEW!!!!! I opened the van door and hopped out.

  ME: Dude. You look terrible.

  Jakey: Nice to see you too.

  Me: Seriously, what happened to you?

  J: Oh, well, it’s a long story—there was this ancient diary, and one thing led to another, and Attikol’s thugs ended up holding me down and shaving my head to see if I happened to have a birthmark shaped like a moon under my hair . . .

  Me: Oh, huh. Gabfrax, that thing is huge.

  J: Yeah, well, turns out, there IS a reason I’m called the Moon Child.

  Me: What are you guys doing here? I mean, Raven cold banished Attikol from this place, last I heard.

  J: It’s all about this diary he found. Hey, let’s go sneak into his trailer and I’ll show it to you. You’re gonna flip.

  Me: But . . . wait. I mean, what are the odds we would be here at the same time? I’m flipping over THAT right now.

  J: Oh, that’s nothing, I knew you were headed here, so I suggested it.

  Me: You . . . but . . . that’s not cool! I need Attikol to keep out of my family secrets, man!

  J: There’s nothing here for him to see. A big old dust bowl. Dust tray. Dust serving platter.

  Me: Well now. Don’t you think he’ll find that kind of suspicious? Start asking questions? Questions that might just lead him to ME?

  J: Oh. I didn’t see it like that.

  Me: I thought you could read ALL my thoughts.

  J: Well, I guess you hadn’t thought that particular thought yet.

  Me: [Dry like the sandpaper.] Oh, right. You are correct. While we were driving over here, I never ONCE considered the possibility that everything might have vanished into thin air. Clearly, I am a fool.

  J: OK, well, sorry about that. I really needed to talk to you, so I just told Attikol we should come out here.

  Me: May I suggest that next time you just use the phone?

  J: Look, come check out this diary and you’ll understand.

  So we snuck around to Attikol’s trailer. Raven was working her magic16 on him, and on his henchmen, so no one noticed us slipping inside.

  The diary is extremely old and falling apart. Have taken a careful look at it and quizzed Jakey a bit and here is what I have learned:

  Attikol inherited the diary along with a bunch of other family stuff when his father died a few months ago.

  It was written by some ancestor of Attikol’s named Boris, who lived on the East Coast during the late 1700s.

  There are many similarities between Attikol and Boris: Boris also traveled with a big group of henchmen, ran a medicine show of dubious authenticity, and, to be blunt, used the vast family wealth to be a total jerkwad.

  Of particular note to Attikol was Boris’s description of his hired psychic, a young man named Caleb, who had a large moon-shaped birthmark on his scalp. Hence the forcible shaving of Jakey.

  On August 4, 1790, Boris writes, he visited some relatives in Seasidetown. While there, his dog tangled with their cat and wounded it in the fight. (Man . . . if I didn’t already dislike Boris, that was the clincher.) Later that day, he happened to witness his young relative Lily healing the cat using a “dark elixir” that seemed to be fountaining up from under her house.

  Guessing (correctly) that the dark elixir was some kind of cure-all, Boris hit upon the plan of bottling this elixir and selling it to the townspeople, who were being decimated by a white fever epidemic. Not that he had any desire to help people, mind you; he just wanted to take their money and boost his reputation.

  So he locked Lily and her family in the upstairs rooms of their home, guarded by his henchmen, while he set up bottling operations in their basement.

  The potion worked amazingly well on seemingly any ailment—including the dread white fever. Word got around fast, and Boris sold out almost immediately.

  But on August 6, the basement fountain dried up. Boris suspected that someone in the family was responsible.

  He used “persuasive techniques” on them to encourage them to tell him the fountain’s secrets in hopes that he could get it flowing again, but no one would help him.

  And on August 14, young Lily was stricken with white fever and died.

  Her mother and sister escaped Seasidetown, along with the psychic Caleb, during Lily’s funeral. Boris speculated in his diary that Caleb likely sheltered them at his parents’ ranch near Salem.

  On the final page of the diary, Boris describes how he left town that night, as did everyone else who could ride, walk, or crawl away from Seasidetown and its deadly plague.

  So, yeah. That’s some of what I’m trying to digest right now. I mean, dark elixir?! Flowing under her house?!?! That’s just a little too much like Great-Aunt Emma’s black rock to be a coincidence, I think. But it gets better . . .

  ME: OK, this is creepy. I never knew about Lily until two days ago, and then I meet up with you guys, and you have this diary that’s all about her death?

  Jakey: Well, we’ve had the diary for a while. I didn’t know she was your relative until you had your first session of Strange 101.

  Me: Um . . . but . . . so . . . I mean, you haven’t been in Duntzton lately, right? I thought you had to be pretty close to someone to read their mind.

  J: I’m getting better at it. I can read my mom’s mi
nd from across the country now.

  Me: Wow . . . doesn’t that drive you crazy, hearing all those people’s thoughts?

  J: Well, it’s not like I hear everyone between me and her.

  Me: So it’s more selective now?

  J: Yeah, I can direct it a lot more these days. Peek in on the important people . . . [Obviously reading my thoughts.] Yeah . . . sorry. I’ve been checking in on you. Only now and then, I swear.

  Me: Uh . . . you do realize this is giving me the super-creeps, right?

  J: [Looking embarrassed.] If it makes you feel any better, only the sort of big and dramatic stuff comes through from that distance. I mean, like, Great-Aunt Lily, but not, like, what you had for dinner.

  Me: OK . . . well, don’t make a habit of it. I need my secrets, you know.

  That’s all I said out loud, anyway. He knows as well as I do that I am trusting him not to give away my secrets to Attikol. Trusting him because I have very little choice. Trusting him when it doesn’t come naturally to me to trust anyone. When I realize that the main factors keeping his mouth closed are A) his dislike for Attikol, and B) his loyalty to me. Loyalty that is somewhat based on his expectation that I will someday manage to rescue him from Attikol. An expectation that I’m not completely sure I can fulfill.

  ME: [Sighing. Not liking the situation any.] OK, kid, here’s what I really need to know. What does this diary mean to Attikol? What does he think he’s going to do with this information?

  Jakey: Oh, he thinks I’m going to betray him somehow and escape, like Caleb did to Boris.

  Me: Yeah. We should be so lucky. What’s he doing about it?

  J: Oh, y’know, constant surveillance while we’re in towns, keeping me locked up in my trailer, enforced head-shaving, threats of violence . . .

  Me: Cramjams, that sucks rocks. What else?

  J: Well . . . you’re not going to like this.

  Me: Spill it, you!

  J: OK. First, he believes that the dark elixir really belongs to HIS family.

  Me: Even though it was obviously Boris stealing it from Lily?

  J: Yeah, well, you know he’s not the smartest guy. But also, he seems to think Lily’s side of the family stole it from Boris’s side originally. Like, a long long time ago.

  Me: OK. What else?

  J: And . . . now he wants to track down the descendants of Lily’s family, to see what they know about the elixir.

  Me: Oh flamjars. Do you think he has a chance?

  J: Uh . . . he knows your grandmother’s name now. Not your mom’s yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time.

  ME: [Gulping.] And what does he think he’s going to do if he finds these descendants?

  J: [Uncomfortably.] You really don’t want to know the details.

  Me: “Persuasive techniques,” huh?

  J: Yeah. I am WAY too young to be seeing some of the stuff I’ve seen in that guy’s mind.

  Me: OK. Thanks for the warning. I’ll get back to ya soon, kid.

  Later

  Home again. Have questioned Great-Aunt Millie on where Blackrock might have gone. Here’s how THAT went:

  ME: Hey, Aunt Millie, we gotta talk. Raven and I just drove out to Aunt Emma’s old house in Blackrock . . . I mean we tried. There was nothing there! Mile marker 923, right? Did we go to the right spot?

  Great-Aunt Millie: Youuuu were in the same ssssspot where you found it lasssst, yesssssss.

  Me: All right, so . . . where was Blackrock?

  GAM: My dearrrr, Blackrock isss not a physsssical place, tied to physsssical coorrrrrrdinates. When Emma died, Blackrock began to lose itsssss anchorrrrr in this worlllld. And when youuuu left, it came unmoorrrrrrrred in space-tiiiimme.

  Me: [Sighing] Gahhh. So how can I find it again?

  GAM: You mayyyy never find it againnn.

  Me: [Trying to swallow my incredible disappointment.] OK. Anything you advise?

  GAM: [Long pause.] If you’rrrrre meant to find it, then onnnnnne day you willlll find it . . . but no one can helllllp you with that but yourssssself.

  This is terrible. Unbelievable. I have totally squandered my inheritance from Great-Aunt Emma!!!!! If I had only known Blackrock was going to disappear like this, I would have brought way more black rock home with me, never wasted it on silly uses (e.g., fingerpaint, axle grease, shampoo), and/or never left Blackrock to begin with!

  17 Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

  18 And I wouldn’t mind a little extra supply to use in experiments.

  Sept. 7

  Today's assignments:

  Practice standard tunings for the guitar-13 points

  Avoid dying of boredom while practicing standard tunings for the guitar-53 points

  Invent way to block mind reading-113 points

  Get T.O.M. running and save Aunt Lily's life- 13 million points

  Have been doing some research on The Mind in hopes of finding a workable way to keep Jakey from reading mine. Have rejected the idea of giving myself total amnesia. Not that it wouldn’t work (been there, done that). No, I’m looking for something more selective. I don’t really need to block Jakey from everything in my mind (e.g., it will be nice for him to know immediately when I beat his high score at Brats Blow Chunks), but I would like to keep certain family secrets and other intellectual property from him.19 All I’m asking for is a kind of mental barrier. A brain partition, if you will.

  Disappointingly, most of the literature on psychic power is either A) obviously written from the point of view that psychic power is a fairy tale, B) intended for IQs in the double digits, or C) in Russian. What I need is some solid scientific research on the topic. Clearly, most reputable scientists have shied away from having their names associated with investigation of psychic power. Too bad!!!! Will keep trying.

  Later

  Have done an exhausting amount of reading and come up with two possible solutions: dissociative identity disorder and self-hypnosis. After a LOT of thought, have finally decided that dissociative identity disorder simply will not do. Granted, having multiple personalities in my head would no doubt be interesting and novel. I mean, of course I’ve done the whole dividing-my- personality-into-two-warring-bodies bit, and THAT was certainly a wild ride. To say the least. But when it comes down to it, I think I’d rather just be alone. That leaves me with self-hypnosis, which has a much better chance of working with fewer disastrous side effects (e.g., no interminable hours of therapy, no hospitalization, no The Three Faces of Emily).

  Later

  Self-hypnosis is EXCELLENT!!!!!!! Have practiced a bit and performed a quick experiment, which consisted of concealing a test phrase (“BRICKLEBITING FRICKLETS”) in my mind, then calling up Jakey. Spent a few minutes chatting with him about random topics, then casually asked if he could tell me the test phrase. Much to his irritation, he could not. YESSSSS!!!

  Me: Look, I’m gonna try going back to Lily and Boris’ time to see what I can do about all this. I don’t suppose you could still read my mind if I were visiting the past, huh?

  Jakey: Uh, probably not.

  Me: Even bet—I mean, too bad. Hey, I’ll call ya later, kid. Hang in there.

  Later

  Have taken apart the Oddisee and transferred the PPC into the Time-Out Machine. Then scraped together all the dried flakes of black rock I could find. I had to reinflate my kiddie pool and dismantle several very nicely-built contraptions to get a few more precious grains. I have absolutely no idea if dried black rock will even do the trick, and there is nowhere near enough of it for any testing or fine-tuning. Fingers AND toes crossed that my first jump back is on target. I think that in this case, I have a VERY good chance of my targeting being pretty exact. I mean, I now know the actual date the cat tail was severed. Should be no big deal to dial in to any spot on its time line that I choose.

  Assuming the T.O.M. works at all, that is.

  Am looking around my room at the mess I’ve made trying to get the T.O.M. up and running. Wondering if it is even worth the effort. I rea
lly should bear in mind that the further back in time I go, the more dangerous it will be for me there. I could come down with white fever, or smallpox, or rabies, or . . . the vapors, or some other hideous disease I have no resistance to. Or, I could be burned at the stake as a witch! Uh . . . actually, am pretty sure they were not still killing witches in the 1790s. And let’s be honest, I am perfectly capable of whipping up a batch of white fever vaccine, or any other vaccine, in my home lab. Should really start considering the pros of going back instead of focusing on the cons.

  Later

  I think it IS worth the effort to go back. I mean, if all I do is keep Lily from dying of white fever at age 13, I’ll feel like I accomplished something. But it’s not just that. If this trip goes well, I have a chance to keep Attikol off my trail. And that’s pretty huge.

  Plus . . . Lily had her own fountain of dark elixir/liquid black rock. Is it too much to think she might be able to tell me how to find Blackrock again?

  Later