Chapter 54

  Michael Whyte

  Of course we all know that Jim is special. Everybody knows that! But he’s not special for the reason that most people think.

  - excerpt from Kate’s Journal

  Michael petted the new Hazel as though it were a bomb that might explode. The new Hazel arched its back and wriggled in excitement, just like the old Hazel. It acted like the old Hazel, except for the teleportation. It looked like the old Hazel, except for the coloration and the lack of eyes. It seemed…maybe more intelligent? Sometimes the new Hazel looked at Michael in a way that almost seemed meaningful, as though Hazel actually had something to say could he but speak.

  Jim had no problems with the new Hazel. And Elizabeth, while she had no idea what was going on, had told Michael that maybe he should ‘just go along with it.’ If Hazel was somehow like Callie now, she had said, then he had nothing to worry about.

  “I’m scared about Isaac,” said Jim as he played with the blue ball. The ball, at the moment, possessed no extraordinary properties. If it fell, it bounced for a while and then stopped.

  Michael watched the white dog. Just like Hazel, it was over-interested in everything happening around it. “Well there’s nothing we can do for him right now,” he said. The dog suddenly leapt to its feet and tore off across the park at top speed. “Is it about that Black? The guy in the painting?”

  “Yeah.” Hazel ran a few laps around the park before returning and flopping down beside them, panting and smiling.

  Michael looked up at the sky. A few wispy clouds stretched lengthwise across it. “You bummed about your paintings?”

  “Yeah,” said Jim. “But I guess it’ll be okay. I think I’ll get the chance to redo the ones I was working on.”

  “Your birthday’s coming up.”

  “Yeah. I don’t want anything though. I mean, I just want us all to be together, and to all be okay.”

  “Right.” Montana. That’s where they should go next. To make sure Isaac would be okay. And then…back to AJ’s place?

  “Did you take any good pictures?” asked Jim.

  “Some.”

  “What was your best one?”

  “Probably the one of that old-time-looking store out on main street. The angle of the light was great.”

  “Oh, nice. The light. Good.” Someone else saying it like that might have sounded condescending, or disinterested.

  Hazel hopped to his feet, then lay back down.

  “Elizabeth said photography means drawing with light,” said Jimothy. “Can we go look at the store?”

  “Sure.” Michael stood. Then after that they should probably head out. To Montana. He helped Jimothy to his feet and handed him his cane. “We’ll go check it out, then we’ll pack up and go.”

  “To Montana?”

  “Yeah.”

  He walked Jimothy out to Main Street. It happened when they reached the sidewalk, the event which Jimothy would later call the “Cascade.” The sky broke overhead.

  “Hey,” said Jimothy, looking up into the sky.

  “Yeah, I see it,” said Michael.

  Hazel ran laps around them, barking furiously and leaping up into the air, biting at the clouds. They stood together on the sidewalk, looking up, until Jim fell over and Michael helped him back to his feet.

  “Jim, what is this?” Michael remembered the picture he had sent to Isaac—the one of a kid looking at a crack in the sky. He kept looking at the sky. Yeah, it looked like that painting.

  “Photography,” said Jimothy beside him, as though in wonder.

  Michael looked down at Jim. “What?”

  “Look, Mike! Photography.” Jim reached into the air in front of him and drew a diagonal red line with his index finger. The line was as thick as his finger, and bright, opaque red. It stuck in the air, unmoving.

  Michael could think of nothing to say, so he settled for “Ah.”

  Jim proceeded to draw a smiley face in the air, this time in a shade of deep green. He grinned in pure delight.

  Michael stepped forward and circled the shapes Jimothy had drawn in the air. They existed in three dimensions. He reached out and touched the red line. It was smooth and hard like glass, neutral in temperature. It didn’t move when he applied pressure. First Hazel and now this? Was he going crazy? “Jim, is this a dream?” he asked.

  “Let me check,” said Jim. He visibly concentrated, as he always did when seeing the Line. Then he shook his head. “Nope. It’s real. Hey Mike, maybe you should get a Line too.” He kept grinning.

  Mike laughed weakly. “Uh, yeah. Maybe.” He gripped the red line in the air and pulled. It didn’t budge.

  Jimothy swept his hand through the air over his head. Vibrant color bloomed, shimmered, spiraled into cascading folds of light. The colors flexed away into the air before dissolving.

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  “Wow,” Mike whispered. Another painting came to mind, the picture AJ had sent him. The one Jimothy did not remember painting. It had looked a little like this. Michael got the feeling that he could benefit from going back and having another look at all of Jim’s paintings. Tonight. Tonight, he would do that.

  “Listen,” he said, “Maybe we should get—”

  The crack of a gunshot.

  A flash of white light.

  Michael was lying on his back in the middle of a road, looking at the fractured dome of the sky. He and Jimothy sat up together in mutual disorientation. “What was that?” asked Jimothy.

  Michael scanned the area. Had that really been gunfire? Yes. They were here. He hadn’t been careful enough. Were they tracking his car?

  He found them down the street, lit by the slanting afternoon sun: men in orange and grey coats. He saw the new Hazel crouched in front of Jimothy, fangs bared toward these men. He saw a van rapidly bearing down on them as though to run them over. Very rapidly.

  Michael tried to scramble to his feet. He had to get Jimothy out of here. But there wasn’t time. The van was too close.

  Jimothy reached out toward the oncoming vehicle. An angled plane of translucent blue color appeared in front of them. The van hit the ramp full speed; it cruised right up over their heads and crashed sideways onto the street behind them. Tiny bits of glass and debris pelted the Whyte brothers.

  Don’t think about it. Just go. He had to get them to their car. Had to get out of here.

  Gunfire thundered through the air. Mike rolled on top of Jimothy. He didn’t think it would help. But Jimothy mattered. And if he was going to die, Mike wanted to die doing something that mattered too, like protecting his brother.

  Although the sounds of gunfire did not cease, Mike did not feel any pain. Were they shooting at something else?

  He twisted to look. A half dozen men down the street were unloading at Michael and Jimothy. But something stood in the way: Hazel. A dozen or more stuttering copies of the white Australian shepherd, all crouched in the same attack position, shuttering like glitching graphics in a videogame. The men beyond kept firing, but nothing touched Mike or Jim.

  “Hazel!” Jim shouted. “Hazel! Don’t hurt them, okay?”

  Michael watched Hazel closely, trying to figure out what was going on.

  For just an instant, flickering copies of Hazel appeared behind the men with guns. The shooting ceased; the men in grey coats shouted in pain and fell to the ground, clutching at their knees, their legs.

  Michael turned and saw Hazel prancing excitedly beside Jimothy.

  “Good boy,” said Jimothy with a smile. He patted Hazel on the head. “Now,” he said, “can you take us to Isaac, Hazel? And the rest of them? Can you do that, boy?”

  Hazel jumped up into the air, glowing like a lightbulb. A flash of whiteness bloomed outward when he hit the ground, as though his pure white fur expanded into all of Michael’s vision.

  When it had passed, Michael saw Jimothy lying unconscious on the street, and Hazel nowhere in sight.

  Without stopping to question it, he scooped Jimothy up in his arms and ran to his car. Those men who had been shooting still lay on the street, wounded in the legs. Had Hazel put their own speeding bullets behind them? Don’t worry about it; just go.

  He made it to the car. He gently placed Jimothy in the passenger’s seat and buckled the seatbelt. He shut the door and opened the backseat to throw in his camera.

  “Michael Whyte, is it?” said a voice behind him.

  Michael swiveled and held the camera up like a weapon. He saw a middle-aged man, tall, narrow, with a well-trimmed beard, wearing one of the orange-and-black coats. He leaned aslant as though against a gale. The man flinched backward at the camera. And although he visibly re-evaluated it as being just a camera, he remained on-guard and didn’t take his eyes off of it. Afraid of the camera?

  “Photography,” said Mike. “Drawing with light.”

  Michael unscrewed the lens cap and continued to hold it as though threatening to take a picture. The man stepped back and raised his hands to show that he held no weapon. “My name is Ezekiel, I guess,” said the man. Strange burn scars decorate the skin around his eyes.

  “Okay,” said Michael. Ezekiel did not look immediately threatening, but Jim had just been shot at. “Who are you? Why are you trying to kill us?”

  The man sighed and rubbed his forehead. “It wasn’t you. We just wanted the angel, I guess. But now…” The man’s watch beeped. It was a smart-watch. He held it up and tapped through a few messages, reading something. He mouthed a profanity, then looked back at Michael. “Have you seen a man named Black?” he asked. “Of course not; you’re still alive. Forget it. However—”

  “You mean this?” Michael stepped back and extracted the painting from the back of the car with one hand. They’d been going to get rid of it anyway, right?

  Ezekiel stepped back in fear, his eyes wide. “You still have that? I thought it had burned!”

  “Uh. Nope. Here you go.” He tossed the canvas to the ground at Ezekiel’s feet. The man leapt away as though Michael had thrown a deadly serpent.

  Michael took this opportunity to move around to the driver’s side of the car and get in. Time to leave. He had no desire to hang around with Ezekiel and his injured cronies. Just get Jim out of here.

  He put the car in reverse and backed out of his space, keeping a clear view of Ezekiel, who now had a firearm but was aiming it at the painting on the ground. Even in the sunlight, the painting looked just like a black void, a window with literally nothing on the other side. And Ezekiel was going to, what, shoot it? Michael didn’t think that would work. Gunshots sounded from behind as Michael left the parking lot and turned away from the highway.

  The eerie breaking sound continued overhead, vibrating in Michael’s bones as he took a side street, turned a corner as quickly he dared, then peeled off onto the highway and floored it to the north.

  Ezekiel unloaded his entire clip on the painting as Michael Whyte drove off. The Whyte brothers could be dealt with later. But if Black somehow showed up, everything would go to shit even further than it already had.

  Ezekiel turned his back on the painting and strode back to main street. His men still shouted and cried out in pain. All of them, shot in the legs with their own bullets. These angels were terrifying. Someone, somewhere, had not told them everything. Someone had set them up. That someone was Raschez. Damn him.

  A voice, behind him: “Shay, don’t I know you from shomewhere?”

  Ezekiel froze.

  “He wash here, washn’t he? The artisht. Yesh. I shee.”

  A cold sweat broke out over Ezekiel at the sound of a gun slowly being cocked behind him.

  “But firsht…we have unfinished bushinesh.”