Halien, Part 5

I have too much free time. Vacation's over tomorrow.


THE REST OF IT GOES HERE
of this present moment I shudder at the shock of him. Ghastly white and naked he stood, save for a purple loincloth drooping with many folds from his bone-gaunt hips. The boy stared into my soul’s windows, and I felt an odd sensation about my heart, cold and violated as if it were being fingered for sport. His eyes were Haley’s, strangely lit and indigo-flecked, but unlike hers the emotional sense emanating from them was menace. The boy was frail and surely no older than five yet I froze before him as if he was the giant, and I was Jack and there was no beanstalk route of escape. I would’ve extended my hand but he was in my face.
“Hi there, I’m Chuck,” I said, forcing a smile through the fear. He snatched the book from my lap, brushing against my arm with a hand of ice. Terrible was that touch,
and too deeply embedded in memory now to ever be excised. The boy clutched the book to his chest, turned around, and headed towards the open door. Slam! went the door but not the boy. After flinging the book into the room (hibernation chamber?, I wondered) he sat facing the right side wall in lotus posture. My heart still felt tight and cold as though the boy’s fist enclosed it and could squeeze it out of existence at whim. I turned from him, thinking, Save me Haley. And there she stood, bold and smiling.
“My brother bothering you, Chuck?”
“No.” My eyes fixed on the boy again. Esthetically, from a distance, he was beautiful. An eastern adept with bulbous head a bit luminescent. “He just wanted his book back. Is he--”
“Oh he’s been studying Zazen meditation. He’s a special kid.”
“Specialness seems to run in your family,” I said.
“I have the book, Chuck.” She seated herself next to me. In the room’s ambient light her skin chameleoned into a warm pink. The icy fingers had withdrawn from my heart and my eyes were drawn to the slim metallic thing in Haley’s lap. It had a fluid iridescent sheen which followed the circular motions of her fingers as she caressed it. “Now, as I’ve said, I trust you, Chuck.” She laid a hand on mine. Warm, mother-tender, comforting. “But--” She gave me a firm squeeze, sending goosebumps up my arms. A draft upon my soul, a warning: “Never breathe a word of this as long as you live.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
“As I promised my father so long ago, Chuck.” Rainbow sparks leapt from her drumming fingers. “I break that promise now at great risk to myself because.” Her lips
trembled as she took her free hand off the book and placed it on my knee.
“What’s wrong, Haley?”
“I’m lonely, Chuck.” Again the smell of apples, and her eyes were brown.
“I understand,” I said.
“And I’ve dreamed of you, Chuck. These family secrets are making me crazy. I need to share them. You’re the one, Chuck. You have to be.”
She looked rosy and fragile. It was the beer garden all over again, and my heart was a molten mess. Her words had activated my deepest, oldest need for belonging. “Yes,” I said, and nodded. She handed me the metallic tome. Its surface had lost its color, had turned to dull grey the moment I touched it, and all I could think was It just needs to get to know me.
“Don’t worry, Chuck,” Haley said. “Open it.”
There were no pages, no words, but the method of reading was obvious. On either side of the silvery surface were indented hand-prints. With a deep breath I positioned my hands over the prints. It was an exact fit. My hands tingled. I closed my eyes. My stomach and brain and groin tingled as if I were experiencing the dead-dropping descent of the universe's steepest roller coaster. And that analogy does no justice to the experience. None could. I was literally on another planet. Crazy, I know. I pinched my arm, I squeezed my balls, I slapped my face hard. Not a dream, and I was not with Haley. I was alone in a desert, and the color of the silky sand was indigo. I was not afraid. I was aware that somewhere my actual hands were on the book and Haley was right next to me, and it's a good thing I didn't think of her little brother with the vampire skin. I became aware of a hot zephyred breeze, scented with a sweet potpourri of cinnamon and nutmeg and god knows what else, but it was good, and the smell carried me along the rippled sands buzzing with pleasure. At the apex of a high dune I stopped, drop-jawed at the twin sapphires rising above the distant horizon. Two red-jeweled suns, and I don't know how
I discerned that they were rising, but the intuition proved true. I was naked.
And the sky, my God! the sky was green as the grass of good green earth. Indigo
sand. Sapphire suns. Green sky. And I recalled at that moment that as a boy in kindergarten, Mrs. Jackson belittled me so badly in front of the class that I wet my pants for finger-painting the identical scene that I now saw before me. I remembered her cruel words accompanied by a slap on the knuckles by her thick wooden ruler. "This is no good at all, Chucky! Everyone knows the sky is not green, it's blue! And sand is not that godawful hue! When are you going to follow the rules! I told you to paint your home, and everyone else did--everyone but you, Chucky!"