Нил Шустерман - Scorpion Shards

“Turn it,” demanded Tory, and so the astronomer-turned-fortune-teller reached for the central card with a shaky hand, grabbed it by the corner, and pulled on it.

The card ripped in half.

It had caught on a splinter of wood in the old desk. Bayless gasped in horror, as he looked at the torn half of the card in his hand.

Winston took the card from him and pulled the torn half from the table, holding the two halves together. The card showed a golden circle, containing a creature: half-man, half-woman. In the four corners were a torch, a star, a sword and a grail.

“What is this card?” demanded Winston, but Bayless only shook his head and stammered like a crazy man.

“Tell us!”

“Everything.” He said. “This card is The World.”

And their fortune tore it in half.

Bayless stood up, his eyes darting around the observa­tory. He gasped, a revelation coming to him, and he began to rummage through his papers. “I understand,” said Bayless. He was terrified, but at the same time over­come by some excitement that the others were yet to un­derstand.

And there was something else . . . a strange hum that was growing in the room. A vibration that made every­thing shake.

“What do you understand?” shouted Tory. “Tell us!”

“I’m ready for this,” said Bayless. “Everything I’ve done—everything I’ve written, everything I’ve learned—my whole life has been for this.” He began piling up books on his desk, pulling them from shelves and talking as if he made perfect sense, which he didn’t. “I’ll come with you—I’ll document every single moment and no one will laugh at me again.”

By now the gears and casing of the telescope had begun to rattle and groan with the strange vibration. The three kids stood up, and looked around in terror. Something was very wrong here.

“Listen to me!” shouted Bayless, ripping open the drawers of his filing cabinet and pulling out piles of pa­pers. “There are things I can tell you; things I’ve never published because until now they’ve never made sense. Things you have to know!”

The roar in the observatory was deafening now, an earsplitting shrieking that sounded almost like voices. But Bayless was too excited to care.

“I know what’s happening to you!” proclaimed Bay­less.

But before he could get any further, there was a blast of light, and they all began to scream.

Because the room was suddenly filled with monsters.

Michael did not hear their screams—he was far away, bolting aimlessly over the fields, cursing the stars that looked down on him, cursing the earth that supported him, until his wanderings brought him in a circle back to the buildings of the university.

A class was letting out, and he hunched in the shadows, watching every pretty girl that passed—and they were all pretty in one way or another to Michael. As the crowd thinned out, one girl was left by a bicycle rack.

Michael stepped out of the shadows. He thought he would just watch her as she rode away. That’s all. Just watch.

For days Michael had looked away from girls—he had fought that burning feeling by standing in the cold rain, by screaming into empty fields—but now his resistance was low. He was tired . . . and before he even knew it, he had turned on his peculiar magnetism like a tractor beam.

When the girl heard his footsteps stalking closer, she didn’t think anything of it at first. “Did you enjoy the class?” she asked.

Michael just stared at her, enjoying her every move. “I’m not a student,” he answered.

She began to get a bit apprehensive, glancing around to see if any of her friends were still there, but everyone was gone. They were alone.

“You’re very pretty.” Michael took a step closer, she glanced at him and in an instant she was caught.

Before Michael could pause for a moment’s thought, he was kissing her and she didn’t resist for a moment.

Michael broke away.

“No,” he said, fighting it, “that’s not what I meant to do . . . What I really need . . . I mean what I really want to do is just. . . talk. That’s all.”

But she didn’t hear him, she was staring into his eyes the way they always did. She spoke, almost giggling, as if this were all part of a dream. “My name’s Rebecca,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Michael.”

She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him again. “Why am I doing this?” she said.

“Full moon,” said Michael, although it wasn’t. He was burning inside now, the sweat beading on his face.

Rebecca glanced over her shoulder, to make sure that everyone was gone, then took his hand and led him off down a dim, tree-lined path.

As they ran, Rebecca looked to the right and left. Mi­chael knew she was searching for some hidden place where they could get back to what they had started—a place to match that dark hidden place in Rebecca’s mind that Michael had already found. She was already falling into that darkness with the thrill of a sky-diver.

They came to a windowless building—the school’s physical plant. Steam billowed from the roof, air whistled through vents, and inside a pump rang out a dull toll sending water, gas and electricity to the many buildings of the campus.

Rebecca pushed Michael up against the door, kissed him, then giggled. “You kiss good,” she said.

It was getting out of hand. He knew that he should never have looked at her, but now his worries were drowning in a stormy sea of Rebecca’s kisses. Going around the bases was not a good thing for Michael. He had only done it once—in Baltimore, and after what hap­pened there, he swore not to let it happen again. Since then, bunting his way to first had been the name of the game—but suddenly he realized that he was about to swing away.

“You really don’t want to do this,” said Michael feebly, but even as he said it, he gripped her tighter and felt his own sense of control slipping away.

They leaned into the door, and it squealed open into a cavern smelling brackish and damp, where a water pump pounded and rattled them from head to toe.

Maybe it will be different, thought Michael, maybe it will be all right, and he clung to that thought like a parachute, as he slipped into the darkness, like a man leaping from a plane.

Monsters!

The shadows Tory Smythe saw leaping around the ob­servatory became permanently carved into her mind. Al­though it all happened in just a few seconds, she knew ex­actly what she had seen.

Shadow-black tentacles wrapped around the cradle of the telescope. A clouded face that swarmed with a million hideous insects descended upon the astronomer’s desk and something with cold dark fur brushed past Tory, its breath sickly sweet.

In an instant the telescope was torn from its moorings and came crashing down. The primary focus lens broke free and spun on the ground like a coin, casting patterns of refracted light around the circular room. Bayless was screaming—everyone was screaming—then the crea­tures let out their own unearthly wail and a blinding ex­plosion knocked them all to the ground. Something leapt at Tory. She opened her mouth to scream . . . and it was gone. The beasts were all gone. The light faded, and she just sat there, hands pressed against her ears, eyes shut tight, and her face contorted in a silent scream. She heard the others screaming, though—Winston and Lourdes— she heard them burst out of the observatory and race down the hill.

But Tory couldn’t move. She had heard old stories of how looking at some monsters could turn you to stone, and she wondered if that had happened to her. She cursed herself for having come here.

I don’t believe in monsters she told herself, but that didn’t make a bit of difference, because she knew what she had seen.