The portal the stranger had come through blinked away, leaving undisturbed air and sky in its place. Otto and Sheed eyed the space it had occupied. They understood portals were doors, and the stranger was now on their side. So what was on the other side? Where had he come from?
Why was he attacking Mr. Flux?
The two men kept rolling; broken blades of grass clung to their clothes like green lint. The stranger drew back his left fist to punch Mr. Flux, and a silver band on his ring finger gleamed.
Otto lurched forward, intending to break up the fight, but Sheed gripped his arm hard.
“No, Otto! Look!”
Mr. Flux twisted beneath the stranger in ways a normal person could never manage, stretching like he was made of taffy. He dodged the punch easily by bending his neck into a sideways U shape, then coiled his leg around the stranger’s waist the way Sheed wrapped licorice around his pinky before eating it.
“Boys!” the stranger said, his voice strained as he fended off Mr. Flux’s weirdly bendy limbs. “Get back to the house. I got this!”
Got . . . what?
At first Otto had thought Mr. Flux was the weaker man in this fight. Now he didn’t think Mr. Flux was a man at all.
Otto grabbed his backpack from the grass and retrieved the camera, looping the strap over his neck. The gift he’d been so eager to take. If Mr. Flux wasn’t really a man, was his present really a camera?
Otto’s feet felt rooted to the ground, so it was a good thing Sheed was there to scream directly into his face and yank him off Harkness Hill.
“Maneuver #1!”
Maneuver #1 meant run.
They got back to Grandma’s house in no time, gasping and winded. Not from the run—their typical speed was sprint; they rarely got tired—but from the weird. What was all that about?
They rushed through the screen door, or tried to. Otto tugged the handle first, and it didn’t budge. Strange. Grandma never locked this door.
Sheed said, “I told you to start doing pushups.”
He grabbed the handle along with Otto. The door shimmered when they pulled together, a vibration that traveled all the way up their arms, then it opened so suddenly with an unsticking feel—like tearing loose a strip of silent Velcro.
Not thinking much of it, they ran inside. Neither of them kept the door from banging shut behind them, so both tensed for Grandma’s inevitable “Y’all know better than to be slamming doors in my house!”
Except it didn’t come.
Sheed got worried.
Otto too. He yelled, “Grandma!”
They were breathing too loud, and their pulses thumped in their ears, so Grandma’s response was hard to hear. It wasn’t the yelling they expected (and often deserved), but her calm, soothing voice. What they’d come to think of as the bad news voice.
“Boys, come in the kitchen and try not to panic. All right, now?”
“Grandma?” Sheed called, nervous as he turned the corner.
She stood still at the stove with her back to them like she always did when making her banging macaroni and cheese, and also-banging-but-in-a-lesser-way collard greens. Usually when she cooked, the food had the house smelling some-kind-of-good, and they’d scheme ways to get an early spoonful of banana pudding or sneak a slice of sweet potato pie. At that moment, they didn’t smell a thing.
Sheed knew Grandma had “ailments,” and his stomach twisted thinking she must be having a spell to be standing so stiff and talking so low. “Grandma, what’s wrong? Is it your sugar?”
“No, baby. Grandma took her insulin.”
“What about your blood pressure?”
“Naw, I don’t believe it’s that.”
Neither did Otto. His stomach twisted for different reasons, taking in all the little things that just weren’t right about this scene.
“Boys, I’m so glad that you two are still able to move. Thank the Lord,” Grandma said, “I think the county acting up somehow. Though it ain’t never done something like this before.”
Sheed circled to Grandma’s left, Otto to her right, until they saw her pouring broth into a soup pot. The stream of brownish liquid in her clear measuring cup was not moving, even though the cup tipped well past the point where gravity should’ve emptied it. Instead, it looked like something solid was connecting the measuring cup to the pot. The only time Otto ever saw liquid look like that was in—
He gulped.
It was in pictures of waterfalls. A snapshot where the water was frozen forever.
The flames under the pot weren’t flickering; they were still, like paintings of flames. Sheed watched grandma’s unblinking eyes and unmoving lips. He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Grandma?”
“Don’t put your hands in people faces, boy,” she said. “It’s rude.”
He snatched his hand back. It was her voice, but her slightly parted lips didn’t move. “Grandma, why are you talking like a ventriloquist?”
The sound of the word ventriloquist sent an additional shiver down Otto’s spine. Bad memories of their ninth adventure that summer, when they took down the Dastardly Dummy of Denos. But Sheed was right, Grandma spoke like she was throwing her voice. It appeared that was the only way she could speak.
Sheed asked Otto, “What’s happening here?”
Otto could only think of the camera dangling from his neck. He removed his pad from his back pocket, scribbled some thoughts:
Otto’s Legendary Log, Volume 19
Entry #34
Today was normal (as normal as days could be in Logan County) until Mr. Flux and the stranger showed up. The stranger was very clear we weren’t to take any more pictures, but didn’t explain WHY. Now Grandma can’t move.
DEDUCTION: This can’t be coincidence . . . but HOW does it all relate?
Otto said, “I have a hunch, but we should go into town to confirm.”
Sheed said, “Shouldn’t we do something about Grandma?”
“Something like what?” Ventriloquist Grandma said, alarmed.
They tried tipping her backwards, Otto pushing, Sheed catching. It was like trying to push down a tree. They each grabbed an arm and tried to lift her. They’d have had better luck lifting the house.
“She’s really stuck,” said Sheed, sweating from the strain. “Can we move anything?”
Otto thought about the way the screen door had been stuck, then unstuck when they first arrived home. “Let’s find out.”
He tried sliding one of the chairs from beneath the kitchen table. At first it wouldn’t budge, but slowly it gave . . . like coming loose from strong glue. Otto continued the experiment. He could pick up forks, spoons, and knives easily. When he tried his Frosty Loops cereal, it was tough for a second or two, but eventually peeled away from the counter. Sheed struggled with the refrigerator door, but got it after a few good yanks. Cabinets opened fine with a little extra tug, and they could lift Grandma’s biggest, heaviest pot from beneath the counter when they worked together.
They sat on the floor panting from the effort. Otto scribbled.
Entry #35
Small things = easy to move
Medium things = a little tougher, teamwork helps
But we couldn’t move Grandma, even when we worked together. Why?
DEDUCTION: Grandma is too big to move.
He showed Sheed, and his cousin nodded. “Sounds about right.”
Otto scribbled more notes, spoke to himself. “If Grandma’s too big to move under the current conditions, does that mean all people are?”
“Don’t call me big, boy,” Grandma said.
“Sorry.”
Sheed said, “You try the phone?” Then checked it himself. A little sticky, but he lifted the handset easy enough. No dial tone, though. He dropped it back into the cradle. “The camera. Mr. Flux said it was supposed to capture the best time of our lives. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Otto stood, unable to look his cousin in the eye. “Let’s go to town. Then we’ll know. Once we know, we can fix it.” He almost said, Like we always do, but couldn’t muster the confidence.
Grandma said, “Please hurry, boys. I’ve got an itch.”