The curtains, chunky and powder blue and emblazoned with little cartoon ears of corn, defended the room from the light. Martin yanked them open and felt the early afternoon warmth cling to his face. He scooted back on the bed and got comfortable.
The journal was an absolute mess. Pages were stuck together and warped with water damage. The ink had bled everywhere, creating a gray broth with random fragments of legible text floating here and there. Throughout most of it, Martin could determine where one entry ended and another began, but it was nearly impossible to get a sense of when exactly they were written. They were just a sprinkling of thoughts and observations, completely open to interpretation.
… starting new with a new diary and a new life and a new world! That’s right! Every! Stupid! Person! You turn on the TV and it’s static. Radio too. You scream your lungs out and no one can hear a damn thing. Swear. Scream your swears if you want. It happened. Look. Look!
… a pound of peanuts for dinner and drank a beer. Beer is gross, so I won’t be doing that again. I went to Marjorie’s room to make sure she wasn’t there. She wasn’t and that’s a good thing. It makes me mean I guess but there are so many times when I wished she was dead. This is better than dead. Wherever she is, they’re more able to handle her. I’ve never been able to. Isn’t that what loving someone is about, wanting the better thing for them? I could destroy things if I wanted. I could drive a car through the bowling alley. I’m not going to do that because I have been left here for a reason. To protect the world? Probably not. I did go to Tyler’s house. I put his clothes on his bed and I peed all over them and I smashed his computer and TV with a hammer. It felt okay to do that, but then, I can do anything I want.
… put a sign up near the highway that said “Zombies keep out, no brains here.” Funny stuff, but jokes don’t work when there’s no one to …
… going out. I didn’t think about that. The water too. I guess those things don’t run on their own. I bet I could find a generator. You put gas in those and there’s lots of gas if you know how to siphon. I’ll need heat when the winter comes but that’s …
It was stupid for me to think I was the only one. I saw someone today.
… like he’s my age. I want to follow him, but he’s up to something and I’m not sure it’s safe. He collects signs and books and other stuff. He burns them. He stacks them in Town Square and dumps gas on them. It stinks like nothing I’ve ever …
… a tiger. A tiger!
Since finding that first diary in his basement, Martin had wanted to know everything about Kelvin, but now he thought it might be best to put this book down. It had the potential to reveal things he wasn’t prepared to handle. He had operated under certain assumptions, and if those assumptions proved false, then it would be another deafening blow to the voice on his shoulder. But resistance, as they say, was futile. He dove back in.
… to my house with a statue of a lizard in its mouth. “You Have Been Summoned!” That was written on it. You can’t make up that stuff. We met in the church. He was sitting in a puffy chair. A big lizard sat next to him. He told me there was work to be done. He was nice enough about it, polite and all that. His name is Nigel. He wants me to …
Nigel told me there will be others. He said he’s seen them out there. It’s taken a week or so to destroy everything that “needed to be destroyed” and he said I could name “our new kingdom.” Xibalba is what I came up with. He chuckled and he asked me if I knew what it meant. I told him it was the Mayan underworld. He told me it also meant “Place of Fear.” He had a bear with him when we were talking ab out this, so there was that …
… town this morning. He will make his entrance when the timing is right. He took the animals with him. I won’t miss him, but I don’t hate him. I really don’t.
… is Trent and he seems like a good kid. It shocked him to see me, but we sat around in the church and he told me about how he got here. It was pretty wild. He seems wimpy and all, but he swam through a flooded subway tunnel! I told him to stay and he decided to sleep in the McNallys’ house. It’s yours …
… once or twice a week. Lots of kids on bikes. One girl came in on a monster truck. She’s kind of nasty, but she’s smart and, you know, she drives a monster truck. I’m not great at being mayor or whatever, but they want to listen to me, so I started giving everyone jobs, based on what they’re good at. We should have plenty of fun, but I need to make up more rules. First things first. No one goes in the hospital. This is my place to get away from it all. This is my home away from …
… exactly like he said it would. We were leaving the church after doing the Arrival Stories for this crunchy girl named Gina. There was Nigel, waiting in Town Square with the tiger and the Komodo dragon and he pointed at me all serious and he said, “I will be talking to him and only him.” Then he walked up the hill and went inside Dr. Rubio’s house. The kids asked if I knew him and I told them I had never seen him in my life.
I kissed four girls today, but not the one I really wanted to kiss. I’d like to bring her here and show her this room and tell her the truth, but there are things you don’t tell when you are …
… Felix’s wacko plans. His Internet idea seems beyond strange, but Nigel told me to let him go ahead with it because it could prove useful. I call Felix plenty of terrible stuff and I’m not sure why I do it, but the kid bugs me more than …
… Green died right in her own bed. It took about two days and there was blood dripping out of her mouth and it was awful. Tiberia tried, but she couldn’t do a thing. Nigel was right on the money. It hurts me to wonder how on Earth he predicted it. He tells me over and over again that “sacrifices need to be made in order to have the world of our dreams.” Of our dreams? If he really thinks …
It was almost ten pages until the next set of legible entries. Martin held the smudged and dirty paper up to the light, but he couldn’t make out more than a few scattered words. When the entries were readable again, they seemed sloppier. It was as if each one had been written faster than the one before. He could see the anxiety in the ink and he could almost hear Kelvin’s voice, exactly as it sounded that night by the fire—wry, exhausted.
… and when I ask him where all this prophecy crap is getting us, he goes full-on jerk and lectures me on leadership and power and how “the weak are here to serve the strong.” Kids used to be happy doing what they wanted for so long that I didn’t think it would end up like this. Now everyone’s getting nervous and arguments are starting. There hasn’t been a new Forgotten in almost a year. I think it’s finally time to do something. I got the Diggers together and told them about the mine shaft and they’re obsessed with it now. There are worse ideas than going down there and looking. For Marjorie’s sake, I should at least have a look. What’s wrong with …
… her a message in a bottle and she came and we hung out in my basement again and we stayed up for a long time talking about who we were and what we did before the Day. I told her that Xibalba was supposed to be the perfect place, a balsa world, popped out and glued to gether. Lane told me how mu ch she hated her family and so I pretended to hate Aunt Bonnie just as much, but I really don’t. Aunt Bonnie was there and that’s all and that’s fine. Not that I miss Aunt Bonnie. I miss her laugh, maybe. I miss Marjorie. More now than when I was alone. I don’t miss Tyler or school. I miss the feel of being a kid and not making decisions that …
… swallows arrived fast and dark. I’m not sure how Nigel pulled that one off, but there has to be an explanation. Always seems to be. He gave me a bird-shaped clasp for my cloak and when I was leaving he told me that I’ll have to “take responsibility for my decisions.” What is that about? He can sit in his stinky zoo and blab in riddles and keep them all scared and docile, but he sure can’t control my decisions. I’m done with his garbage. I meet with the Diggers tonight and we pack for the …
… begging me not to go. She says she won’t be able to handle this place without me. I’m going anyway. I can always come …
I dumped water all over myself to clean off and I must have dumped it all over the journal and it’s like it’s wiping out my thoughts and erasing my past and telling me I never mattered. I’m worthless. A coward. I am a coward. A coward! They’re dead. All of them. I’m in this bed hugging the talisman that I made for Marjorie and I’m telling the demons that I want them out. Out! I want them gone for good because I didn’t ask for this. The only thing I ever asked for was to be alone. But Nigel found me. He came to this room and I had to tell him what happened. I explained that I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even close. I was a hundred yards away, heading out, when it collapsed. Then I went back and there was nothing but rubble. Couldn’t even hear their screams anymore. Just like that. Just like that. Nigel didn’t seem pleased that he was right again and he didn’t judge me. He actually hugged me and he told me that I’ll have to wait a few days, to pretend like I was trapped in there, so it doesn’t seem like I abandoned them. I’ll have to take the blame, but he promised they’ll forgive me. As long as I go out into the world and find something to save us all. He said he’ll talk to Lane and give her a hopeful prophecy. And he said I should mark my trail to find my way back, because I have to go as far as the ocean. When I find it, I can return, and I’ll be welcomed as a hero. I asked him what “it” is. He said when I see “it,” I’ll know.
And that was all there was. The journal ended there. Martin sat with it open in his lap for a moment. Then he peeled back the pages, prepared to read it all over again. Not all of it made sense, but it gripped him just the same.
A voice came from across the room: “Is it a good book?”
Martin looked up, expecting Darla. A response of “Excuse me?” was perched on his lips, but it didn’t come out. It couldn’t.
Because standing in the doorway was a woman. Her stringy blond hair was hanging haphazardly over her face. Her feet were sheathed in pink bunny slippers. She wore a floral dress with a puffy white winter coat over it. A large digital watch decorated her left wrist. When she stepped forward, she put a dirty finger to her lips.
“They don’t let you read anything that’s not approved, you know?” she whispered.
“I … I …”
The woman was at least twice Martin’s age, probably three times. As she got closer, he could see that her lips were chapped and broken, peppered with blood.
“They’re coming back, I’m sure,” she went on. “And they can’t have you in the wrong room. Especially in my room.” With each word her voice grew more agitated. Strands of tensed muscle hollowed out valleys in her neck.
“This is no one’s room,” Martin made the mistake of saying.
“So I’m no one now?” she barked back.
“I didn’t say that.”
“And is that why you put me in that cage?”
“I …”
“You took my kitten,” she roared. “What did you do with my kitten?”
Even if he’d had an answer, it was too late. The woman lunged at Martin, and before he could defend himself, she had her hands around his throat. Her thumbs pressed down on his windpipe and sent a jolt into his chest. It was the most terrible feeling he had ever known. He tried to knock her back with his hands, and she thrust her knees forward and pinned his biceps to the bed. In her eyes there was a singular look. He could have been wrong, but he felt they were telling him something: “It’s your fault.”
As the feeling drained from his face and dizziness worked worms into his skull, Martin decided to let go. He had never given much thought to dying, and he didn’t give much more thought to it now. All he knew was that his life had been leading to this moment, to this room, to this woman, whoever she was.
He closed his eyes.
When he felt her hands pull away from his throat, he assumed that his adventure had come to its conclusion. His story had come to an end.