Frightened Boy by Scott Kelly (easy books to read in english txt) 📕

around my throat. His skin was burning, impossibly hot for a healthy human; the searing sensation was almost as painful as his fingers crushing my windpipe.

“Impossible,” he stated.

“It’s the only way,” I croaked. “I was there. She killed Erika, tried to kill me. She is controlling the tower, this is a trap.”

Escher stared into me.

Still couldn’t breathe; he was killing me. “She killed Erika,” I mouthed. “Kill me if you want. Go ahead. I deserve it,” I choked out. I no longer had the air to form words.

He dropped me. I fell to the ground, my legs stretched out in front of me.

“Fuck!” he boomed. “Shit, fuck. Fucking fuck. Shit!” He kicked the machine gun with a heavy boot, sending it spinning out onto the asphalt. A hail of return fire began to sound off from down the street. Everything around Escher was being peppered with bullets, but he didn’t seem to mind.

The heat coming from Escher intensified, and I scrambled back as I felt the hairs on my arms begin to curl. When bullets came close to him, they ignited in glowing bursts of light, seeming to burn up in little bursts of flame as they crossed into his atmosphere.

I peeked around the corner around and watched policemen moving into position on all sides of the lobby, using Escher’s distraction to pulling their wounded back to safety and amassing in larger numbers. We’d overstayed our welcome, yet we’d accomplished nothing.

For the first time, I took stock of the Strangers. Not looking good; many were bleeding on the floor even as they continued shooting; and most could not walk. They piled into the meager cover provided by the office, some resting guns on their fallen comrades for balance.

“There’s no exit,” I said. “No way out of the tower.”

Escher raised an arm and waved us toward the rear of the lobby. I raised myself shakily to my feet and hugged the wall, following him slowly as he marched toward the last defensible position of the tower.

Amongst the small crowd of Strangers—perhaps thirty—I could see a few familiar faces: Mal was shooting savagely toward the police behind us, and even Lux picked up a gun and begun shooting, though it looked unnatural and unwieldy in his hand.

Escher led the way by a dozen feet. He kicked a small submachine gun up into his hands. As he stalked toward his assailants, he fired an impossible number of rounds without reloading. The aura of fury around him was sweltering; the dozens of bullets heading toward him at any given moment must have evaporated as they crossed it, like unworthy asteroids entering Earth’s atmosphere.

Escher pointed toward a supply closet, a barely-visible white door. “In here!” he shouted, though it was no longer necessary. Those that were still alive were within earshot.

The closet didn’t go anywhere; I knew it didn’t. I knew every inch of the building. It brooms, mops and nothing more.

But when Escher opened the door, it led to a stairway. Impossible. Still, he walked down it and out of view—I followed, Strangers pushing by me, shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

Escher crouched at the bottom of the narrow stairway, where he pulled something up from the ground. Another impossibility—a sewer cover. He reached down, hooked a finger into it, and in a display of Herculean strength, lifted the heavy steel plate from its place on the ground and placed it against the wall behind him. Without a second thought as to depth or direction, he leapt down the sewer entrance that never should have been there.

Mal, Lux, myself, and a handful of Strangers followed.

*

The last remaining Strangers followed Escher through miles of twisting, filthy tunnels, clambering up mountains of shit and raw sewage through a maze that seemed impossibly long and complex.

I was exhausted. The fumes made my head ache, and the emotional trauma of the day weighed heavily on my mind. Even Escher showed signs of uncertainty and slowing. He stopped at each branching pathway and looked first left, then right.

There were no police in sight. Either they’d considered the battle won or they had no method of following us.

Finally, we entered an expansive dead end. The chamber was alien; a gargantuan waterfall of clean water flowed from some unknown source thirty feet in the air. The chamber housed a large cement platform that was dry underneath the waterfall, large enough to hold what remained of us. The smell was mostly blocked out by the running water.

It was a dead end, but it was an end nevertheless—a place to stop. I had the eerie notion that we weren’t exactly trapped under the city. This place seemed too large, but I didn’t know where else we could be.

Escher didn’t seem to know where to go or what to do. I watched as he sat with his back up against the wall, stretched his legs out in front of himself, and stared blankly into the rushing water. For the first time since he started his mission to reunite his mind, he had completely and totally failed. He’d been betrayed.

I sat down near him but faced away. Tears rolled freely down my face. I hoped my sobs were drowned out by the sounds of the water.

Erika was dead. It didn’t really matter where we were or what we did.


20. Drawing Hands

I must have cried myself to sleep. I woke up to face the same grimy gray walls and sounds of rushing water that became my new prison.

We’d been down there for hours with no food and barely any light. The last remaining Strangers spread out on the cement, backs to the walls. Many were injured, and most were resting. There was no food and no medicine for them.

Mal looked restless. Escher was catatonic, staring into the water.

I crawled over to him. I had begun to wonder about exactly where—and more importantly, how—we were. The vastness of the chamber seemed improbable, given that we were probably not very deep underground. “Hey,” I whispered.

Escher didn’t respond.

Lux spoke from Escher’s side. “You know where we are, don’t you?” he asked.

“I have an idea,” I said. “This must be how he feels. Where do you think we are?” I was scared to voice it—it sounded crazy.

“I think he created this chamber and this maze,” Lux said.

I squirmed uncomfortably at the thought. “Impossible,” I murmured, though I didn’t really believe it. The way the sewers had progressed into this room, the way the manhole had appeared—it seemed like Escher had created the entire thing out of a need to escape, and now he was simply stuck here, leaving us a victim of his catatonia.

I crawled clumsily over to Lux’s other side and leaned back against the wall with him. I rubbed a tear off of my cheek with a rough sleeve.

“Sorry for your loss,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m not the only one who lost someone.”

“Samuel Jesse Meskee. That was his name. I’ve known him for ten years, and already I can’t remember what he looked like. If I could, I’d tattoo his face on my arm,” Lux said.

“He was a good guy,” I replied, eyes low.

“Did Whisper really betray us?”

“Man I…yeah, she did. She killed Erika.” Erika would have survived if I had just punched the numbers into the keypad correctly, if I wasn’t such a nervous wreck. Fuck me and fuck my weakness.

“Mrs. Umiker. Jetta Umiker—that was her real name. She hated it. I went to school with her, y’know? I wonder when she turned sides,” Lux mused. “I never thought she would—I can’t imagine why.”

I had my own opinions, but I kept my mouth shut.

I think she loved a man who thought of her like a glorified slave or at best, a psychological footnote. The image of the sad, haunted Whisper I’d seen that night on the floor of the garage came back to me. I didn’t dare ask Lux, but I could guess their history. That’s probably why Lux left, because Whisper fell in love with Escher.

I looked at Escher’s face to see if any of what we’d said had registered. He didn’t seem to be able to hear. “We have to wake him up somehow. Snap him out of this,” I said.

“We’re trapped here without him,” Lux agreed. “He brought us here. I’ve never seen him do anything like this.”

“I think he’ll snap out of it,” I said, trying to sound hopeful. What was it Erika had been so adamant about? Faith. I owed her that much. I could have a little faith in Escher.

“I’m sure he’ll come back and blow the whole city up or whatever it is he’s trying to do.”

Escher blinked. The force of it was such that I leaned back from where I sat.

He remained still. I looked at Lux, who seemed equally confused.

Suddenly, Escher leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, a slight smile on his lips.

Today, I am scared I made a monster ten times worse.

*

“I must divide the plane,” Escher said after several more hours. “We must begin again. Order and Chaos. Epoch is the only way."

I shuddered.

“That’s the answer,” Escher said, talking to himself, voice flat. “They won’t listen. They only reject freedom. They reject me. Division, like chemotherapy, destroys the good and the bad. I’ll take it all away. And finally, I’ll be able to move on. I must excise one part to save another,” he said. “It won’t be easy. I wanted to do this slowly. I wanted to dismantle Little Brother and see if I could heal the people of Banlo Bay, but that plan failed because I was betrayed. Now there is no choice but to sever the limb, to find a cure for what ails me. Epoch is out there somewhere. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll find it again.”

Escher closed his eyes again, and we waited longer.

*

I was starving, but Mal made me lose my appetite. He licked his lips at every wounded Stranger, apparently contemplating cannibalism.

“You’re going to have to stop him if he tries to eat one of them,” I told Lux.

Lux chuckled. “Good luck with that.”

I looked at Mal, who was crouched on his feet, arms bent over his own knees. The soulless serial killer turned and looked at me with bloodshot eyes.

If Escher didn’t wake up soon—if he didn’t lead us out of here—Mal would kill us one at a time. I doubted if all of us combined could hold him back.

“I think he’s close to the edge,” Lux murmured into my ear. “Escher keeps him in check usually.”

I shuddered as Mal stood and began pacing up and down the length of the flowing water. I prayed Escher would come to his senses soon; each time Mal’s feet passed in front of me, a chill slithered up my spine, and I’d feel for a moment he was going to reach down and pluck