Page 71 of The Bad Weather Friend

“I do not believe she has kept it for sentimental reasons,” Mengistu said. “A photograph would require less maintenance and be more poignant than this.”

“Why is the head locked into that collar?” Benny wondered. “How is it preserved? How can the sphere just float there like that?”

“If she can’t turn us into gray-eyed worker bees,” Jurgen said, “maybe we’ll end up like this.”

The third—and not immediately apparent—reason the head was so disturbing became evident. The eyes opened and moved left to right as if scanning the boys. From the mouth issued the voice they heard on the night of the bears—–a sinister, whispery chanting of words no human being had ever spoken, somehow conjuring in the mind images of reptiles.

In their haste to exit the room, the three friends nearly wedged together in the doorway before bursting into the upstairs hall. They thundered down the stairs, raced along the ground-floor hallway, crossed the kitchen, and fled the house.

By the time they sprinted halfway to the school, they realized that being seen in full, frantic flight would raise suspicion and invite inquiries that, in their current condition, they wouldn’t be able to answer with convincing equanimity. They slowed to a walk, almost to a saunter.

Clouds piled up, dark gray with coaly veins, seeming as solid as charred timbers and soot-blackened masonry, as though this world existed under the ruins of another. The thunderheads were for the moment mute, the lightning sheathed, the wind pent up in preparation for a long and violent exhalation.

“We’re in very deep shit,” Jurgen said. “Even deeper than we realized. I mean, I knew we were in shit up to our hips, but in fact we’re in it up to our necks.”

Less interested in the depth of the shit than the purpose and meaning of the horror before them, Benny said, “What the hell did she do to his head? Why does he talk in that weird voice? Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not the headmaster talking, but ... but ...what did she do to his head?”

“I believe,” Mengistu offered, “that his head—to be precise, his brain—has been adapted to function as a receiver ofmessages transmitted far faster than light from a world elsewhere in the Milky Way, or perhaps from another galaxy altogether and through a wormhole. I would venture to say that the transmissions are neither something as innocent as the audio of an alien game show nor a warm greeting from one intelligent species to another.”

That made sense to Benny. If his father hadn’t been Big Al and his mother hadn’t been Naomi, if he had not been for nine months in the care of his bitter death-obsessed grandmother Cosima, if Mordred Merrick hadn’t been his tutor during the Beverly Hills years or Mr. Rudyard Bromley his weeping butler, he might have found Mengistu’s speculation unconvincing. However, the people and events of his life had shaped him into a boy who was immediately receptive to the idea of a severed-head intergalactic radio receiver.

As they drew near the school, they became aware of a stretch limousine, a black Cadillac, parked in front of Felthammer House. None of them had seen such a vehicle on the grounds before. Given the dire situation in which they found themselves, they were quick to assume that the limo conveyed to Briarbush Academy yet another threat.

“What if it’s her?” Jurgen said. “Maybe she knows what we’ve done. Maybe she knew the moment we broke the pane in the kitchen door, and now she’s back.”

Benny shook his head. “She’s not supposed to return until tomorrow. And she’s more likely to come back in the helicopter.”

“I fully concur,” said Mengistu. “Let us not be distracted by an ominous-looking car. Time is running out. It is imperative that we put our plan in motion and escape from Briarbush today.”

“The plan,” Benny said. “Your plan. I guess the time has come that I have a need to know about it.”

“Jurgen has a special uncle.”

“Special how?”

“He’s nice,” said Jurgen. “He’s nothing like the rest of the family. He’s nice, and he’s sane, and none of the rest of them will have anything to do with him. They hate him. He’ll take us in and never tell them.”

“The school won’t release you to him.”

“Of course not,” Jurgen said. “We’ll need to escape here and get to him. He lives in Arizona, far from the rest of the family.”

“We intend,” said Mengistu, “to fade into the forest and hike south approximately seventeen miles to the small town of Smuckville, where we will find the means to make a phone call to Jurgen’s uncle, who will then come to transport us to Arizona.”

“There’s a town named Smuckville?”

“You would not think so, but there is.”

“Seventeen miles in these forests might as well be a thousand,” Benny said.

“We have a compass and a trail map,” Mengistu said. “At this time of year, snakes will not be a problem. We are aware that we must remain on the lookout for bears and cougars. We do not dismiss the possibility we might encounter a depraved and heavily bearded individual who resides in a ramshackle cabin, who lives off the land, and whose unnatural lust compels him to kidnap young girls and boys to be sex slaves until such time as he murders and eats them. However, we are not stupid, and we are determined. We will have our wits and the hope of Arizona. We remain convinced that we will get to Smuckville and ultimately to Arizona unless we both suffer broken legs in a fall or drown ina flash flood or encounter an entire cult of depraved individuals of such number that we are overwhelmed.”

Jurgen said, “So are you with us?”

“Absolutely.”

They had come to the limousine, which looked long enough to accommodate eight passengers. The engine was idling. The tinted windows were so dark that nothing could be seen of the occupants.

A back door opened, startling the boys, and a woman in a chic black-and-white coat with a fur collar stepped out of the vehicle.

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