The Book of Lies (20 page)

“The patterns are already there,” she says, squatting like a catcher on a baseball team and turning her sword of light up toward the dark wood rafters. “From federal agent, to the homeless van . . . why’s there such a need in your life to protect people? Why do you think you found your dad lying in that park last night? You think that’s all coincidence? Or better yet: that this is just some dumb search for Superman or the imagined Mark of Cain? You and your dad . . .
This
is your battle, Cal—the one challenge you’ll keep repeating until—”

She stops.

“What?” I ask, craning my neck up and following her gaze. “You find something?”

She points the light up at the rafters, not far from the top of the chimney.

“Serena, what is it?”

She doesn’t say a word.

“Serena—”

“There,” she whispers, pointing upward with the flashlight. I follow the flagpole of light up through the shadows of the rafters. Bits of dust sprinkle down like snow in a settling snow globe. But I don’t see—

Krrrrrk.

The sound is soft. Like a squeak, or some extra weight on a plank of wood.

She’s still silent.

“What?” I ask. “Is it a mouse?”

Thdddd.

To land that hard . . . That’s no mouse.

I jump at the sound. It’s up in the rafters.

Above our heads, on our far right, a narrow rain shower of dust cascades from the rafters. Whatever it is . . . we’re not alone in h—

Thddd-thdddd-thdddd.

Serena screams. The flashlight falls. And a thick black shadow swoops in, then disappears, leaving tiny waterfalls of dust on our right, then above us, then on our left.

Still hunched over, I grab Serena’s wrist and tug her back the way we came. The flashlight twirls behind us like spin the bottle, flickering bursts of light all across the attic. Up in the rafters, there’s one last thud. Straight ahead of us.

“Gahhh!” Serena yells, freezing right there.

This time, I see it also—lit by the attic entrance in the floor—two deep-set eyes: one glowing black, the other milky white, where it’s been injured. Behind it, a thick fleshy tail dangles down.

I catch my breath and almost laugh. Across from us, perched up on a rafter just past the open hole . . . “Serena, it’s just a possum.”

“I know what it is!
I don’t like possums!
”

“Can you please relax? Possums play dead; they don’t attack,” I insist, stepping forward to—

“Hsssss!”

“Y’hear that? That’s a hiss! It’s
hissing
!” she yells, her palms wide open and facing each other as though she’s holding the ends of an invisible loaf of bread. She cringes like my aunt when we once found a snake in the toilet.

“That’s not a hiss,” I tell her. “That was—”

“Hssssss!”
it squeals again, baring tiny triangular teeth and raising its ears and fleshy tail.

“Okay, that part was a hiss,” I admit.

“It thinks we’re food!”

“Will you stop, it doesn’t—”

There’s another sound behind us—
skrrch-skrrch-skrrch
. At first, I almost missed it. But as I turn around and check the rafters, I see what the possum’s really after: the small straw-and-leaf nest that sits just above our heads. Two tiny shadows peek out. Aw, crap. “She wants her babies.”

“Babies!? Where!?” Serena shouts, wriggling wildly as if an army of millipedes were crawling underneath her skin. She tries to run, but she can’t. The possum’s directly above the hole in the attic floor. “Nuuuh! Cal, you have to
do
something!”

“Wait, what happened to
facing life’s challenges
and your nice big speech?”

“That had nothing to do with giant cannibalistic rats that just escaped from Middle Earth! Look at those mucous eyes! Please, Cal! I’m serious!”

I laugh again, but I hear that tone in her voice. Next to me, her whole body’s shaking. Her eyes well with tears. Even Superman has kryptonite. We all have our weaknesses.

“What the hell’s wrong up there?” my dad calls from below.

“Zombie possums. They want our brains,” I yell back.

My dad pauses a moment. “Serena doesn’t like possums.”

Next to me, Serena grabs my arm, clutching it against her chest. It’s the absolute opposite of her usual guru Zen confidence, and I hate to say it, but there’s something strangely reassuring in knowing she can flip out just as easily as the rest of us.

“Do your breathing,” my dad calls out from below.

It doesn’t help. She grips my arm even tighter, unable to move toward the possum.

“Serena, it won’t attack us,” I promise.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes. I do.” I go back to my old hostage training. Give them calm and they’ll find calm. I keep my voice slow and steady. “Let’s just . . . keep . . . going.”

She’s still shaking. “Cal, I can’t do this! Uhhh, it’s so— Look at it! If it pounces—”

“It’s not pouncing, okay? It’s just a protective mother.”

“Those’re the worst kind!” she says, shutting her eyes and refusing even to look.

I take a small step forward, and the possum raises its rear end like it’s about to leap.

“What’s it doing!?” Serena asks, her head buried in my shoulder.

“Nothing,” I reply, taking yet another baby step.

Hunched over, we’re less than four feet from the hole. The possum hisses again, baring its teeth.

“Cal . . .”

“It’s just watching its kids,” I lie as Serena again freezes. I try to tug her forward, but she won’t budge. “Serena, as long as her kids are safe, she won’t do anything.”

With her eyes shut, Serena nods but doesn’t move.

“Serena,” my dad calls out, “find your center—”

“Dad, enough already!” I yell.

I can slow my speech and make more reassurances, but instead, I flex the arm that Serena’s gripping and take her hand in my own.

“Serena, you take three baby steps and we’re outta here.”

Still holding Serena’s hand, I take another step. Her grip goes from vise, to clinging, to— She takes the smallest of mini-steps. It still counts.

“There you go,” I say as we finally move forward.

“You lied about the distance, didn’t you?” Serena asks. “It’s more than three steps.”

“Not anymore,” I tell her.

She ducks down quickly, knowing the possum must be close. She’s right.

Up above, perched on the edge of the rafter, the possum peers straight down at us. Its pointy nose doesn’t move, not a single sniff—and its milky eye looks more yellow thanks to the light shining up from below.

Two hands appear through the hole in the floor. “Serena,” my dad calls out, “I’m here.”

We fidget and fumble—my dad guiding her ankles to the ladder, me still holding one of her hands—as we help her squeeze back through the rabbit hole.

She sinks slowly, like she’s being sucked down a bright well. There’s a metal clink: her foot hitting the ladder. I’m on my knees, reaching down into the hole as she finally opens her eyes and looks up at me.

“When we tell this story,” she warns, “it ends with me killing the possum with a rock.”

“Of course—your marksmanship alone . . . plus your deft hand and strong will—”

“Don’t oversell it, Cal. Now let’s get outta here. I need to throw up.”

She lets go of my hand, and as my cheeks lift, I realize that it’s the first time in the past twenty-four hours that I’m actually smiling. And that Serena’s smiling back at me.

“Y’know, that’s the second time you saved me today,” she teases. “I owe you, Superman.”

“Must be the house,” I tease back. It’s nothing more than sharing a stupid joke. But, man . . . it feels good to share something.

“You’re just like him, aren’t you?” she calls up at me.

“Who?” I ask, assuming she’s talking about my father.

“Andrew. My brother,” she says. “He was protective, too—and the walls he kept around himself . . . just like with you, they’re too tall,” she explains. “But that’s why you brought me, isn’t it? To help you lower them.”

I’m about to remind her that we brought her only because we couldn’t leave her at the airport.

But I don’t.

“Cal, we really should get her to a hotel,” my dad interrupts, helping her down the ladder. “It’s not safe for her to run around like this.”

“You think?” I ask. “When she’s with us, we can at least—”

“What the french
toast
? What’d I tell you ’bout letting people in my roof?” a female voice calls out, making the word
roof
rhyme with
hoof
.

Taking off the backpack and squeezing down through the hole, I spot Mrs. Johnsel coming up the stairs.

“Possums are back,” her husband says, calm as ever.

“I
told
you that. You said it was rain.” She then looks up at me. She’s not mad, just confused. “I thought they just wanted to see the bedroom?”

“They got an attic copy,” Johnsel says.

“A whut?”

I hop off the ladder and unzip the backpack. “We were hoping to find some more details about
this
,” I say, pulling out the wax-paper sleeve with the Superman comic inside.

She studies the translucent cover and the typewritten address. “You should go to the museum. They got one just like it.” Looking down at the white dust all over the floor, she adds, “This better not be asbestos.”

“Wait. There’s a Superman museum?” I ask.

“
This
should be the museum,” Mrs. Johnsel says, bending down and picking up the small bits of plaster and rocks that’re scattered across the landing. “Can you believe the city of Cleveland wouldn’t give us a plaque to put out front? Superman was born here! Not even
a plaque
!”

“Um . . . you were saying about the museum,” my father jumps in.

“It’s just an exhibit—Maltz Jewish Museum. By the temple over on Richmond,” Mrs. Johnsel explains. “I think you’d like it. They have one of those attic copies. Plus they got all sorts of biblical stuff, too.” She turns casually to her husband. “We got prayer group before dinner. Don’t think of being late.”

45

H
e parked the rental car around back to stay out of sight.

“You stay here, girl,” Ellis said, giving Benoni a strong stroke along her ears. He kept the car running to make sure she’d be warm, but even with the window cracked, the dog’s breath puffed like smoke in the Cleveland air. “Relax, girl. This won’t take long.”

He walked calmly up the snow-covered alley, sticking to the far left side as he marched toward the front steps of the run-down house. There were lights on inside. Someone was definitely home.

In his pocket, he felt for the jet injector and released the cap from the nozzle. The only reason he’d gotten this far was by not leaving witnesses. And as he knew in his heart, this was a war that had lasted over a hundred years. There must be casualties. “It’s cold here,” he whispered into his phone.

“You’re still better waiting outside,” the Prophet said on the other line. “Let Cal do the legwork. He’ll have it soon. And when he does—”

“I don’t believe in Calvin. I believe in myself,” Ellis insisted, staring at his breath in the night air. “And I believe Cain’s Book was a test. Just as today, it’s a test for me.”

“Then it’s a test you’ll fail. Because if you make a scene and the cops come— The last thing we need is for Cal to run. If he runs—and I’m learning this myself—you
will not
get what you want, do you understand? You should see him right now—born investigator. And the way this is headed, I think we’re finally on to something good.”

Ellis slapped the phone shut and looked up at the bright blue-and-red house. The Prophet may’ve been right about coming to Cleveland, but the Prophet didn’t care about the destiny that Ellis’s mother laid out for him. The Prophet didn’t care about the Leadership and his family’s dream. The Prophet just wanted the Book. The birthright. The Judge warned him as much. And for all the Judge’s faults, he was right about this: The Prophet wasn’t Leadership. And as long as that was true, the Prophet wasn’t on their side. In the end, Ellis knew it was no different than with Timothy, Zhao, or even Cal. Only one of them could get what he wanted.

Lumbering up the front steps, he put his foot in each of the shallow snow footprints left by Cal. There were other footprints, too. One of them small. Like a woman’s. With two hard raps, Ellis banged on the front door. A handwritten sign in the window said, “Superman’s House!!!”

“Easy . . . easy,” a man called from inside. With a thunk and a twist, the door swung open, and Mr. Johnsel studied Ellis for a full five seconds. But Ellis knew that look. All the man saw was the uniform. And the badge. “Whatsda problem, Officer?”

“No problem at all,” Ellis said, forcing a sickly grin. He should’ve come here sooner. The last known location of the Book of Lies.

46

H
ow many?” an older woman with a doughy face asks at the front desk of the museum.

“Three,” I tell her.

She stares, confused, seeing only me. Over my shoulder, the front door to the museum opens and my dad steps inside. It was his idea: waiting in the car to see if anyone followed. But as the door opens, for a moment, I could’ve sworn he was talking to someone out there. “All clear,” he announces to me.

The woman’s still confused. “You said
three
?”

“We have— In the bathroom,” I explain, pointing behind me at the ladies’ room.

“Welcome to Metropolis,” the doughy woman says with a far too high level of joy as she hands me the tickets. “Though remember, we’re only open till five.”

I look at my watch. Less than fifteen minutes.

“C’mon, Serena!” I call out, heading past the restroom just as the door swings open.

Surprised to see me so close, she jumps back, stuffing something into her purse.

“Who were you talking to?” I ask.

“Pardon?”

“Your phone. Sorry,” I add as I point with my chin, “it looked like . . . in your purse . . . you were putting back your phone.”

She stares straight at me for barely a second. It’s a helluva long second. “Just checking messages,” she finally replies, calm as ever. Reading my expression, she adds, “You believe me, right?”