And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (2 page)

1

“Johnny!”

I closed the door, trying to blot out the flashing lights and shouting voices before it was too late. I went to my sister, pressing my forehead against hers for a moment. “Hi, Holly.”

“Johnny,” she said again, but her smile drooped. She shivered. In the weeks that had passed since our time in the desert, life with Holly was
different
.

She didn’t have the full-blown seizures that literally shook the earth. She just faded out for a bit.

The problem was, so did other people around her. I turned and saw my mother, eyes closing like she might be dozing off, although she was standing. I saw a droplet of blood slide from one of her nostrils.

“Holly? It’s okay, Holly,” I said. Then I reached out to her with my mind.
I closed the door. You don’t have to see all the people yelling and the bright lights.

Slowly, her eyes regained focus. She came back. So did Mom, who shook her head and walked into the kitchen.

It wasn’t just Holly that had changed. Life in general was different. We were celebrities, of a sort. Perhaps infamous was the better way to put it. Mom had driven us out of the desert and unwittingly into the living room of every home in the country.

Mom Saves Children From Kidnappers!
read some of the headlines.

The others were less kind.

Did Family Stage Kidnapping for Fame?

Family Seeks Reality TV Deal

Should Andrea Black Face Prison Time?

That’s why the flashing lights were always outside our door. TV cameras. Reporters. Paparazzi. For us. It was insane. They yelled questions at us any time we went outside. I don’t even think they much cared about our answers, just wanted us to turn their way for a photo, or maybe get a rise out of us. I thought often about giving them the one-finger salute, but that’d just get my picture on the front pages all over again.

And the craziest part was that they had no idea what I could do, or what Holly could do. The sandstorm, earthquakes, even tsunamis out at sea — they didn’t link that to us at all. What did a couple of kidnapped kids have to do with crazy weather? Instead, they focused on my mom. They thought she must be manipulating us for profit. Some of the bastards even claimed she sabotaged Dad’s car, causing his fatal crash.

I’ll be honest. If I really were Superman, I’d have punched this bunch of Lois Lanes and Jimmy Olsens in the mouth.

So, yes, Holly had changed, but not as much as we’d hoped, Mom and I. When she spoke to me, I thought,
She’s back!
And in some ways she was, but not in every way. She was more, I don’t know,
present
than before, but language and mobility were still big issues. She said “Johnny” and “Mommy” just fine. Other words were hit or miss. Mom signed her up for physical rehab, to see if she could walk again. So far, it had been a struggle. That meant Holly remained in her chair, the same one she and I had ridden so high, out of the atmosphere. Knowing that really happened was surreal. Thankfully, Holly seemed to have better control of her mental powers. Or maybe, because she wasn’t as trapped, she had controlled her anger. I hoped.

And the seizures — the ones that created earthquakes and a dust storm that could rend flesh — they had diminished to just these strange
fades
. Usually initiated by some jerk’s camera flash going off as he shouted our names.

Another thing was slowly changing. I could communicate with Holly. I could tell Mom what she was saying, or technically, what she was thinking. We could link minds and she could talk to me. It was awkward, because I had to remember no one else could hear her, not even Mom. But it worked. For some reason, Holly couldn’t contact me first. Only I could start a conversation. At least in the beginning.

I reached out.
You good, Hol?

Yes, Johnny. But hungry.

Okay, Hol, I’ll tell Mom. Grilled cheese?

She didn’t reply in words. Instead I just got a feeling back, a bright, warm type of feeling that I knew meant
Yes
. “Mom?”

“Yes, John?” she called from the kitchen.

“Holly’s hungry,” I said.

* * *

Bobby was a weird case. Given all the publicity we got coming back from the desert, everyone wanted a happy ending. They wanted Mom, and me, and Holly, back in our own house. And they wanted Bobby back at his parents’ house. I could tell Bobby hated the idea, but he had nowhere else to go, and I wasn’t about to ask Mom if he could stay with us. Could you imagine the press?
Kidnapped Boy Shuns Parents for Questionable Mom!
Our lives would devolve into a teaser headline. Plus, that would just keep us in the public eye longer. We tried to maintain as boring a life as possible, so the photographers would give up and go away. Maybe it was working, because it seemed like the numbers were diminishing. But it was hard to tell. The prospect of selling a photo of my mom doing something nefarious was too great.
Someone
was always willing to sit in a car across the street from our house all day and night, waiting. God forbid Mom should sneeze somewhere outside. The image of her face contorted would be sold as
Andrea Black in Public Rage
.

Sometimes, just before bed, I’d look out my window at the dark of our street and see a strange car parked there, the orange glow of a cigarette lighting up the face of whoever was behind the wheel. I hated that glow. I wanted nothing more than to walk across the street and tell them everything. Tell them about Sol, Jose do Branco.
Look up the name!
I still felt Sol was a mystery. Who was he, really? And why did he do what he did? Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone — get the photographers off our back and learn more about Sol at the same time. It was a nice dream. But I knew they really didn’t care about the truth. They just wanted to take an easy photo and get paid.

Sol was dead, but he haunted me. Sure, he’d disappeared into a billion tiny bits, but somehow that was less, I don’t know,
final
than seeing him lying dead on the ground. I knew in my head that Sol had been ripped apart, killed, but my heart wanted something permanent. A grave to visit, to be sure he was still there. Or to spit on, perhaps.

I had to be careful. We had so many people around, I never knew when someone might be watching. I had to assume the answer was
always
. So every moment of every day was like a prison. Don’t do anything strange. Don’t draw their attention.

Bobby shunned the awkwardness of being back at home with his parents, so he still came over a lot. The paparazzi didn’t ignore him, but he was less of a focus for them, as was I, and even Holly, despite what their attention did to her. They really just wanted to catch my mom doing something they could sell. So photos of Bobby at his house or walking to mine weren’t important enough to bother with. Sometimes I thought Bobby was lucky that way.

Although we’d hang out, there were no trips to Mount Trashmore, or anywhere else. Just school and back. Otherwise, we stayed inside, curtains drawn, and played video games. It was really, really boring after a while.

We had to get out. Go somewhere they wouldn’t see. We had to. And of course, it didn’t take long for Bobby to start harping on the issue.

“Come on, Johnny! We can do it, trick a bunch of lazy adults, half asleep, sitting in their cars all night!” Bobby said. “It’ll be too easy.”

Of course I agreed. I was getting bored to tears at home. So we made a plan to sneak out one Friday night. Bobby would slip out of his house around midnight, somehow get to my house, and tap on the window by our back door. All I had to do was wait until I heard the sound, then walk out the door. Bobby was already going to check that the coast was clear. If he got caught, or someone was watching, there simply would be no tap and I’d go back to sleep. Easy.

Mom and Holly went to bed as usual. I pretended to do the same, waited an hour or so, then snuck out to the living room and hovered by the back door.

I checked my crappy digital watch three times: 11:47 p.m., 11:58 p.m., and finally, 12:03 a.m.

Tap tap tap.

2

I opened the door and saw Bobby crouched beside it like a spy in a movie. “Get down, you idiot!” he hissed. I dropped down next to him, pulling the door closed behind me with a light
click
.

For a second, I panicked. “Oh my God, I think I just locked myself out!” I started patting my pockets, looking for a key that wasn’t there.
Crap
.

Bobby didn’t flinch. He just reached up and turned the knob. The door clicked again and opened. Bobby looked down his nose at me, and despite the darkness, I’m pretty sure he could see me turn red.

“Oops. Sorry,” I said, giving a nervous little laugh.

“Can we go now?” Bobby said. I nodded.

* * *

Turns out that sneaking away from my house was the easy part. I mean, we hadn’t done it before, so the guys in cars out front had no reason whatsoever to be on the lookout. Once we were a few houses away, we looked back, giddy. There were four paparazzi cars on our street. In two of them, the drivers were asleep. In the third, a woman was on her phone, the bright glow lighting up her face and ensuring she would never see us sneaking around in the dark. The last car was empty. Maybe somebody had to pee.

Bobby and I slipped behind houses, and I remember being surprised at how dark it was. Dense clouds filled the sky and blotted out any possible moonlight or starlight. Turning left and right down random streets reminded me a little of the day things began, when Bobby had chased me through town. Only then I had been worried about being killed and this time I was laughing.

Still, we stayed quiet. Stalked by paparazzi or not, laughing kids running through back streets at midnight would be noticed. At first, I don’t think we actually had a place to go. It was just fun to be out. Not worrying about who was watching us. But finally, running around aimlessly lost its charm, and Bobby started to wordlessly guide us.

Running behind him, I watched as he took certain turns. Were we headed to Mount Trashmore? Definitely not. We hadn’t been there since Walter Ivory died, anyway. The warehouse bay? At first, I thought so, but no. I would have objected if Bobby had steered us there. No, he was heading toward the middle of town. Some place central.

Bobby guided me to the row of brick shops, the place where he had once tried to launch his bike from roof to roof.

It was after midnight, and the shops were deserted. As expected. I mean, not a lot of people need greeting cards at midnight. Once I realized his goal, I happily followed. I mean, sure, Bobby and I had our history at the place. Like the time I thought I’d killed him. But, you know. We were 15 and didn’t get bent out of shape about those sorts of things.

We went around to the parking lot behind the buildings, to the same spot where Bobby had once used the fire escape to lug his bike up to the roof. Assuming the roof was once again his goal, I stood below the fire escape, waiting for him to come help me pull down the ladder. When he didn’t appear, I turned around. And Bobby was gone.

Son of a…

“This is awesome!” Bobby said from somewhere above me. Behind the row of stores, in the long and grimy parking lot, a series of tall lights illuminated pockets of space in yellow hues like old teeth. Twenty feet or so away, off the ground by maybe the height of your average adult, the curved edge of the nearest light showed me only a pair of jeans hovering in mid-air, ending in colorful low-top sneakers.

I blinked. And I realized Bobby was all there, in the dark above the legs, half in the light, half out.

He was flying.

Well, hold on. Not flying. That might make you think of someone zooming through the air, one fist forward, ready to take on the bad guy or spin the Earth’s rotation backward or whatever. Bobby wasn’t doing
that
.

He was flying without moving. Hovering is probably a better word.

It was clear the process was new to him. Bobby’s body was arranged in a weird kind of sitting position, like the way you see astronauts or even unborn babies. Maybe that pose was the body’s default floating position. Anyway, Bobby looked like he was both perfectly at ease and yet supremely uncomfortable.

“How the heck are you doing that?” I asked, staring up at him.

Bobby grinned. “
You
told me about it, remember? Sol floating off the cliff and down to you, like he was flying. So I’ve been trying it at home, in my room. I’ve been able to get a few feet off the ground like this, but you know, in my room, I run out of space.” Bobby looked at the wide open sky above him. “Not here, though.” He started to float upward.

“But how are you doing it?”

“It’s like when you move something with your mind,” he said, clearly distracted by the fun he was having.

I tried to rationalize how to do it, simplify it. I knew that if I thought too hard or stressed too much, it probably wouldn’t work. I tried to follow him, make my body float off the ground. “So you just move an object, but that object is you?”

“Uh-huh!”

Imagine trying to use your muscles to lift yourself off the ground, but the leverage you need
is
the ground. How could I both push off the ground while not touching it? Impossible. That’s how it felt.

Meanwhile, Bobby was getting higher. In the dark, he was a dim shadow against the clouds overhead. Even knowing where he was, I could barely see him. “It’s harder than that, Johnny,” he said. “You gotta sort of trick yourself into not believing you’re moving your own body. It’s weird.”

I tried again, without success. No movement at all. Above me, Bobby paused to look down.

“Try this: Look at your shoes. Don’t think of them as
your
shoes on
your
feet. Just think of them as shoes. Shoes that you could easily toss around with your mind, right? Just try to slowly pick those shoes up.” Then he turned and continued to climb.

Pick up my shoes. No, wait. Pick up shoes that are not mine. Don’t think about them being mine, on my feet.

This is impossible, too.

Bobby was nearly to the top of the building next to us, the same one we’d climbed with our bikes. The one where he’d tried to jump his bike off a ramp, only to crash down to the pavement just feet from where I stood. Leaving me thinking he’d killed himself.

I tried what he suggested, working to calm myself and concentrate. A minute or two passed. “It isn’t working, Bobby.”

“Come on, man, just try it,” Bobby called out from the darkness above. “You can do it.”

“What’re you two doing?” a voice said from right behind me. Spinning around, I came face to face with a tall, gangly guy, maybe 18 or 20 years old. From one corner of his mouth, an orange-glowing cigarette hung at an angle. He wore a white, button-up shirt and dark pants, with a dark apron wrapped around his waist. On his left chest pocket was pinned a little rectangle that read Stuart.

“
Shit
,” I said.

Stuart chuckled at me, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Busted. Ha ha. You guys are so loud, we heard you from inside.”

“In— inside, where?”

“Inside the restaurant.” Stuart jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to a partially open door at the back of one of the buildings. A thin blade of light slashed from the doorway, showing another person standing beside it, also smoking. “Me and Joey worked till close, then had to clean up. So we were making noise, washing dishes and all, but
still
heard your voices out here. I just came to see what’s going on.”

I thought about Bobby, magically floating in space above our heads. Thankfully, he’d had the sense to be quiet ever since Stuart spoke. But all they had to do was see Bobby and… And what? How would we explain it?

“Holy crap, you’re that John Black kid. The one who was kidnapped. I’ve seen you on TV!” Stuart said, taking another puff of his cigarette. Then he fumbled through his apron, producing a scrap of paper and a pen. “Can I get your autograph?” He smiled at me.

I was truly living in bizarro world.

My friend was flying above me in the night sky, while back on Earth, a stranger thought I was famous enough to get my autograph. Weird, right?

“Seriously. Can I?”

“Uh, sure? I guess.” I scribbled my name on the paper, and Stuart looked at it with a big grin.

“Very cool. Thanks.” Stuart turned to head back to the restaurant, and I thought somehow we’d gotten away with it, that he hadn’t noticed Bobby flying above after all. Until Stuart called back over his shoulder as he walked away. “Oh, and tell your buddy on the fire escape to be careful. I don’t want to have to call an ambulance if he falls and cracks his head open on the pavement.” Stuart gave a wave, dropped his cigarette to the ground, and put it out with a twist of his shoe. Then he was gone, along with the other guy, Joey. The restaurant door clicked shut behind them.

Above me, dark against the night sky, I saw Bobby shaking. I’m pretty sure he was laughing.