Pandemonium

Johnson brothers would run out of their house right now they’d be able to save me.

The burning in his chest goes away, and he stops feeling anything at all. He’s not thinking of anything either except the hole that’s appeared in the sky. It’s a black blot, growing larger, like the mouth of a tunnel rushing toward him. He’s seen that blackness before. He’s heard the voices that come out of it. He’s always been careful to look away, to run from it when he could.

But not this time. He can’t run from it, but now he knows he doesn’t have to. Now he knows what it is.

The blackness is a door. All he has to do is open it. The Boy Marvel, on patrol high above Olympia, Kansas, looked down to see the farmboy slip from the bridge and plunge into the rushing stream. Someone’s a little clumsy! the hero exclaimed. He swooped toward the lad and landed with a splash.

Need a lift? he queried. He picked up the boy in arms as strong as Her- cules, and zoomed down the road with the speed of Mercury. As luck would have it, there was a hospital nearby. The Boy Marvel kicked open the doors and walked through with the sopping wet boy in his arms. Is there a doctor in the house? he called jauntily. The nurses were amazed. Someone said, Why, that’s the Noon boy! And someone else said to the hero, How did you carry him all this way—you’re just a boy yourself!

But the Boy Marvel only smiled and said, All in a day’s work, ma’am. Before he left, the hero leaned down to Bobby Noon and whispered, I’m going to teach you a secret. He told Bobby how to make a high- frequency whistle that only superheroes could hear. Whenever you need me, the Boy Marvel said, just whistle.

And with that the caped hero vanished.

Bobby couldn’t move or talk, but the doctors and nurses knew how to take care of him just the same. They put him in a clean room with windows that faced his farm. For the first few years his grandmother came by every afternoon to read to him. After that, he told stories to himself. He measured the hours by the calls of the freight trains. He watched the skies.

Sometimes he got bored, so bored that he dreamed of running wild. He’d jump out of bed and knock over the food trays and yell at the nurses. And sometimes, especially at night, he got scared. He’d hear what sounded like the drone of a Japanese Zero, or the pad of small bare feet on the hallway tile. He’d tell himself to be brave. There were heroes in the world. And Bobby could call on the most powerful one of all. Someday he’d put his lips together and whistle, and the Boy Marvel would come speeding out of the Kansas skies like a bullet.

15

I awoke to the distant howl of a freight train. The sound was familiar, comforting. I blinked up at the dark, content to be safe in my bed, thinking about the train coursing along the prairie. I could almost hear the engineer shouting into the wind as he leaned out the window.

The mash-note chord sounded again, then again, louder. In the second or two of silence between the blasts I heard a car engine start up.

I got to my feet, still sleep-drunk but rapidly waking. This wasn’t my house, wasn’t my bed. Outside the star-cracked window—past the fields, past the highway and the black bulk of the hospital silhouetted against the slate gray of the sky—the headlamps of a train plowed through the dark. The thrum and clack of the wheels carried easily through the damp air. It was impossible to tell how far away the tracks were, but the train seemed to be moving extremely fast. I reached the window and looked down at the front yard. The headlights of O’Connell’s pickup flicked on, and the truck backed up, turned toward the road. I yelled her name.

Where the hell was she going?

I looked up at the hospital, its top windows still lit, and suddenly understood what O’Connell had seen from the window a few hours ago. How the farm must look from a window in the top floor of that hospital. How the Painter had always painted it that way, looking down, from a distance.

Bobby Noon was watching the farmhouse. He’d always been watching.

I turned and started for the door, then realized I was barefoot. I found the first gym shoe, finally found the second under the bed. I yanked them on, sockless, stamping on the heels as I reached the hallway. I called O’Connell’s name, not expecting an answer, and ducked into her room. Even in the gloom I could see that her bed was empty. I turned and plunged into the pitch-black staircase, taking the stairs two at a time, using my arms as guides and shock absorbers, and stumbled into the living room. The front door was ajar. I knocked it wide and ran outside. The bones of the barn raked the gray sky. It was near dawn, and the crescent moon hung low behind the house.

O’Connell had taken the road, but I could head straight for the hospital through the high-grown fields.

I ran.

The frost-hardened grasses whipped at my arms and hands, tangled my feet. I could see nothing but the night sky, the blur of grass, and the lights of the top floor of the hospital jittering in my vision. Invisible rocks and depressions tripped and jarred me, and several times only momentum kept me upright. Finally I saw a slice of deeper black through the tops of the weeds—the road.

Something seized my foot, and I slammed onto my chest. I lay for a moment, the breath knocked out of me, and finally pushed myself up onto hands and knees. I sucked air, and began to cough. My foot was still trapped. I reached down, felt the metal teeth of barbed wire biting into my shoes, gripping the cuff of my jeans. My ankle burned. Nearby I could see now the outlines of a fence, knocked