Balling and unballing his fists, Barry stepped closer. His white, fleshy face was taking on the color of rare roast beef. The bell rang. Or maybe it didn’t. I was having trouble hearing. What was happening to me?
“How’d you get that little cut on your head, McKinley?” Barry’s voice was muffled, like he was speaking inside a long tunnel. “Because I think you need a bigger one.”
I barely heard him. I felt as if something had crawled into my head and was kickboxing with my brain.
I struggled to stay upright. I couldn’t even see Barry now. The back of my leg smacked against a parked car. I spun into the street, trying to keep my balance. The blacktop rushed toward me and I put out my hands to stop the fall.
The last thing I saw was the grille of a late-model Toyota speeding toward my face.
FLATLINING
BEEP…
Beep…
Harp strings? What was that noise?
The street was gone, and I could see nothing. I felt as if I were floating in a tunnel of cold air. I had dreamed my own death, and then it had really happened. I pried my eyes open briefly. It hurt to do it, but in that moment I had a horrifying realization.
The afterlife was beige.
I tried to cry out, but my body was frozen. Odd whistling sounds drifted around me like prairie winds.
Slowly I began making out voices, words.
Peering out again, I hoped to see cherubim and seraphim, or at least a few clouds. Instead I saw nostril hairs. Also, really dark eyebrows and blue eyes, attached to a man’s face that loomed closer.
I felt a hand push my head to the side. I tried to speak, to resist, but I couldn’t. It was as someone had turned the off switch on all my body functions. “Extremely odd case,” the man said in a deep voice. “No diabetes, you say? He had all inoculations? No history of concussion?”
“Correct, Dr. Saark,” came an answer. “There’s nothing that would indicate these erratic vital signs. He’s a healthy boy. We haven’t a clue what’s wrong.”
I knew the second voice. It was my family doctor, Dr. Flood. She’d been taking care of me since I was a baby.
So I was not dead, which was a big relief. But hearing your doctor’s voice is never a cheery thing. I was tilted away from the voices, and all I could see were an IV stand, electrical wires, and a metal wastebasket.
It had to be Belleville Hospital, where I hadn’t been since I was born. I must have been hit by a car.
The math test! I had visions of a blank sheet of paper with a big, fat zero. I willed myself to open my mouth. To tell them I was all right and had to get to school. But nothing moved.
“A highly rare set of symptoms,” Dr. Saark said, “but it fits exactly into the recent research I’ve been doing…”
Dr. Flood exhaled loudly. “We’re so lucky you were in town and could rush here at such short notice.”
I felt fingers at the back of my head, poking around where the upside-down V was. I felt a rush of panic. I figured I was about to become the first kid in the world with a prescription for Grecian Formula.
Heavy footsteps plodded into the room. “Excuse me?” Dr. Flood said. She sounded confused, maybe annoyed. “What are you doing here?”
“Chaplain,” a gruff voice answered. “New on job.”
While Dr. Flood dealt with the chaplain, Dr. Saark pushed my head back and slipped something in my mouth. He held my mouth shut, forcing me to swallow. From under his sleeve, I could see a tattoo that looked like two winding snakes.
What did he just give me? Could he see my eyes were open? What kind of doctor had a tat like that?
What was a chaplain doing here?
“But…I never sent a request for a chaplain,” Dr. Flood said, sounding completely confused. “Are you sure you’re in the right room?”
“Yes, correct,” the man replied. “For last rites. Hospital rules. These situations…you know.”
Last rites? As in, the prayers spoken over people about to die—those last rites?
I panicked. I was obviously in worse shape than I thought. Then my body lurched violently, and everything turned white.
“He’s flatlining!” Dr. Saark shouted. “Dr. Flood, notify the OR. I need a gurney, stat!”
My body convulsed. I heard choking noises—my own. And hurried footsteps as Dr. Flood left the room.
The room was a blur of colors. The two men—Saark and the chaplain—were on either side, strapping my arms and legs down. My head jerked backward, and I thought it would crack open like an egg.
Hold on. Don’t die.
Dr. Saark stood over me, his face red and beaded with sweat. “Now!” he said.
The chaplain was nearly a foot taller than Dr. Saark and at least fifty pounds heavier, but he snapped to, fumbling for something in his inner pocket. I could see his face for the first time—green eyes, ruddy skin, curly red hair, and a deep jagged scar that ran down the left side of his cheek and disappeared into a bushy beard. He pulled out a long syringe with one hand, and with the other wiped my arm with an alcohol pad. As he leaned down, I realized I’d seen him before.
I tried to call out. I opened my eyes as wide as they could go. I stared at the man’s face, willing myself to stay awake.
A word escaped my mouth on a raspy breath: “Red…”
I felt a sharp pain in my left arm. As the room went black, one last word dribbled out.
“…Beard.”
THE DREAM
A ring of fire, screaming animals, the end of the world. I am being attacked by a hose-beaked vromaski, whose breath is like a roomful of rotting corpses. Its head is long and thin, with a snout like a sawed-off elephant’s trunk. It has the sinewed body of a striped, shrunken cheetah, with long saberlike fangs and scales in place of fur.
As it thunders toward me through the burning jungle, its stocky legs trample everything
