The Shadow Mask Read online

  Jeremy took a moment before he answered me. I could tell he was planning his answer carefully.

  “Listen, Leo,” he said at last, looking directly at me. “I think it’s possible that maybe parts of people stay around after they die, like scattered fragments, just stray parts of their minds. And a lot of people do believe in things like heaven and reincarnation, and maybe they’re not wrong. There are as many opinions about death as there are people, and the truth is, they’re all just opinions, beliefs. No one knows for certain. But to think you can communicate with the spirit world is just …”

  “You want to say crazy, I know it.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you want to believe something that will make you feel better. I get that.”

  I didn’t answer. Jeremy wasn’t giving me enough credit.

  “Okay, try to think of it this way,” he said. “Imagine there’s a guy alone in a room. And in this room, they play a steady tone that he just barely hears. It’s called a subliminal sound, and it’s so quiet that he only hears it about half the time. Now some scientists outside the room ask the guy to write down whenever the tone gets louder or softer. Even though the volume of that tone never actually changes, it seems to get louder and softer to him.”

  Jeremy was sounding like Trevor, who always explained everything with a scientific experiment and ended with a question.

  “So why did the sound change for him?” Jeremy asked, and without waiting for my answer, went right on. “Because his unconscious mind, the part of our self that we aren’t aware of when we’re awake, the part that dreams and makes us do all the things we can’t account for, it ebbs and flows like the tide throughout the day. When he’s more alert and focusing on something, he doesn’t hear it. And when his unconscious is in charge, he does. He lets it in.”

  “I don’t get your story, Jeremy,” I snapped at him. “Are you telling me that I shouldn’t listen? That I should tune everything out?”

  “No, Leo. It means that our minds can deceive us. We can hear things that aren’t there. Make connections between fragments where there are no connections. Hear voices in static.”

  This was so frustrating. I hate it when people make a really good argument that goes against everything that you want to believe. Like that there aren’t mermaids underneath the sea or that aliens aren’t right here on Earth living among us. You can put up all the great arguments you want, but in the end, who’s to say it’s not true?

  “Jeremy,” I said, standing up from my chair to let him know I was done with the conversation. “All I know is that you’re not supposed to lie to me. You’re my tutor and you’re supposed to teach me, to tell me the truth. But you lied to me. My dad was interested in that Spiricom record, but you wanted to keep that from me, and that’s not fair.”

  “Leo, I’m sorry. I was treating you like a kid, and I shouldn’t have. Listen, I’m the one who first told your dad about this record, and I can tell you, none of this leads anywhere. You just go in circles, chasing ghosts and grasping at straws. There’s never enough information. Every little piece you find seems connected and intriguing, but it’s all just fragments.”

  I walked to my closet and got out my duffel bag. It was time to start packing.

  “So listen, Hollis and I are leaving with Crane tonight. We’re going to Borneo, and I’m going to help him recover part of a lost artifact. A Siamese twin mask. My dad brought back half, and we’re going to find the other half. Maybe after I get back, we can make a fresh start.”

  “What? You’re going to Borneo? Tonight? And you’re helping Crane? Is he making you, or is he up to something tricky?”

  “No, it was my decision.”

  “I don’t get it, Leo. Three weeks ago you called him a crook and destroyed that horrible dolphin helmet of his. You stood your ground, man. And now you want to go off with this … this grave robber?”

  “People change, Jeremy. I can handle Crane. And is what he does really so different from what you do?”

  “Like night and day.”

  Jeremy, always so laid back and cool, was standing up and yelling at me. Well, yelling for Jeremy, which is just talking really slowly and with extra calm. It was driving me nuts. He was so sure of himself, and so sure of what I should do, but what did he know about my life? I wanted him to see my side — that making a deal with Crane was good for me. Good for Hollis.

  “You travel around the world looking for records,” I said as if someone else was in control of my mouth. “You find them, their owners don’t know their real value, you buy them for cheap, bring them back to your store, and sell them for the highest price. You’re always telling me that records are artifacts, right? What’s the difference?”

  He opened his mouth and slapped his leg. “Everything. I mean, I’m just buying records. They’re just toys, you know? They’re just records.”

  “Just records?” I asked, raising my eyebrows, and took the Spiricom record from him and put it back in my pile.

  “Listen, Leo. I’m going to talk to Crane. If he lets me come on the trip with you, do you want me to? I’d like to because I feel like you’re on shaky ground here.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” I answered, “but do whatever you want. I have a lot of stuff to do before tonight, and I have to pack, so …”

  “Okay,” he said, defeated. “I’m going to go find Crane. I’ll be back.”

  I buzzed for Klevko, who brought the elevator up. As Jeremy got in, I heard him ask to be taken to see Crane. I was glad I wasn’t going to be present at that meeting. Jeremy wasn’t exactly popular with my uncle. In fact, Jeremy and Crane Rathbone were about as opposite as two men can get.

  I went to rouse Hollis. It was after ten but he was still sound asleep. I knew he’d had a rough night but he’d made it through okay, at least well enough to get under the covers. I dangled a little piece of string I had over his face, and his lips made these chimplike movements until finally he cracked an eyelid.

  “Hey, Hollis,” I whispered. “How’d you like to fly on a private jet tonight?”

  He sat straight up, eyes wide.

  “And then once we get where we’re going, we’ll go on a yacht.”

  “Whoa … really?”

  “Well, it’ll be a boat in any event.”

  “Wait, what’s going on, Leo?”

  “Crane wants me to come with him to Borneo, to help him find the lost half of that mask he’s crazy about, and I said I’d only go if you went, too.”

  “Really?” But then he thought twice. “Borneo? I don’t know, Leo. That sounds weird. How long? And who else is going?”

  “Just you and me and Crane, maybe Klevko and Dmitri, too. I don’t know how long, a week, maybe more.”

  “What about school?”

  “Crane’s going to take care of it. And once we get back, we’ll be going to the same school again. What do you say? It’ll be a chance for us to get out of Brooklyn, cruise down the river, do some adventuring, and then we can come back here and start fresh. Come on, chief. Are you in?”

  “Let me think about it,” he said, but I knew he was just playing his cards close. He would come around soon.

  “All right, but don’t think too long. Trust me, you don’t want to miss a chance to fly on a private jet. There’s nothing like it.”

  “Are you forgetting, I took the private jet back from Palmira with you guys?”

  “Yeah, but that was a flight in anger. This one will be different. More fun.”

  “And the yacht?”

  “The yacht might just be a long motorboat, but who cares? It’ll be like when we used to go on those crazy trips with Dad, only we’ll be going with Crane, and you know him, he travels in style. Come on, just say yes.” And I bounced around the room like a boxer, throwing soft punches on his arm. “Come on, come on, come on, Hollis.”

  “All right.”

  “Hooray!” I cried, and grabbing a pillow from his bed, danced around the room like Muhammad Ali,
then launched myself at him with a flying guillotine attack. But he was ready for it, and he got in a couple of good blows with his other pillow. We laughed and wrestled until we were giddy and winded.

  “What’s with you, Leo? You’re so hyper,” he said, chucking a pillow at me, which I dodged.

  “You missed me again! I just feel good, chief. The power’s back on, and I feel powerful!” I pulled the front of my shirt over my head, so that my belly was exposed. When we used to wrestle when we were younger, that was the way I turned into Jessie the Frog, my superpowerful alter ego. “I am transforming into Jessie the Frog. The frog is out. The frog is back!”

  “Noooooo!” Hollis screamed.

  As he raced for me and pounced, I heard footsteps in the hall, then the door opened, and Trevor and Klevko stepped in.

  Without missing a beat, Trevor took two long strides on his spidery legs and literally flew halfway across the room, landing a perfect body tackle on me.

  “The New Guy saves the day!” he shouted.

  “Not the New Guy!” I screamed from the ground.

  The New Guy was Trevor’s alter ego. When Hollis and I used to wrestle, he would mostly just watch, but every now and then, just to mix it up, he would say, “And then the New Guy saves the day,” then attack one of us at random and play the wild card.

  “You boys wrestle like little birds,” Klevko snorted, pushing up his sweater sleeves to show his massive arms. “If you want, I show you how men in my country spar.”

  “That’s okay, Klevko,” I said, knowing that one attack move from him would have any of us twisted up like the little pretzel shards at the bottom of the bag.

  He looked Trevor up and down disapprovingly.

  “You are skinny like one of Olga’s string beans,” he said. “You could never wrestle a bear, like I do.”

  “That’s disappointing, man, because bear wrestling is my favorite sport,” Trevor said.

  Klevko ignored Trevor’s sarcasm and turned to me. “Leo, I go find your uncle and see if he has crushed your other friend yet. And unless you want this one to be crushed, too, you must keep this visit short.”

  When Klevko was gone, I crawled to my feet and got us each a bottle of water from the mini-fridge in the wall.

  “So, I hear it’s a snow day for you,” I said to Trevor.

  “Yup. And since you don’t ever feel like answering your phone, I thought I’d come by and see if you were all right.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Let’s go hang out in my room for a bit. Hollis, get ready, all right?”

  “Yeah, all right,” he said, and flipped on his TV.

  I hadn’t been back in my room with Trevor for ten seconds when Hollis hollered for me. As I was leaving, Trevor asked, “Hey, your bathroom doesn’t have like a futuristic levitating toilet or something, does it? I think I just peed my pants laughing.”

  “Normal toilet, man. I’ll be right back. Let me just see what the boy wants. Oh, and if you have time, there’s a letter on the desk for you.”

  I walked out and stuck my head into Hollis’s room.

  “Check it out, bro,” he said, motioning to his TV screen.

  Mike Hazel was on, but all of his cocky confidence and door-busting bluster were gone.

  “And as I sign off,” he said, looking earnestly into the camera, “I’d like to repeat my apology to Crane’s Mysteries. On behalf of myself and the Fox Five news team, we had no right to insinuate that Crane’s Mysteries had anything to do with that Russian dolphin helmet, and we apologize once again for characterizing Crane’s Mysteries as operating ‘on the edge of the law.’ In the news business, we’re only as good as our sources, and we were misled. But we take full responsibility. Ernie, back to you.”

  Hollis shut it off.

  “That didn’t take long,” Hollis said. “The man got Craned.”

  “Yeah, how’s that crow taste, Mike Hazel?” I taunted the blank TV screen. “What a stupid fake name anyway.”

  As I walked back to my room, it was clearer to me than ever before that my uncle Crane was no one to mess with. He always got his way.

  Trevor was sitting at my desk, reading my letter and stroking his chin. I waited for him to finish it.

  “What do you think, Trev?”

  He scrunched up his face and shook his head.

  “Boy, I don’t know, Leezer. I don’t even know where to begin. Does Crane know about your …” He lowered his voice. “… power?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so, unless Dmitri heard everything when we were in the record store, which I don’t think he did … unless he’s managed to get his hands on the blue disc.”

  “Is that a possibility?” Trevor asked, alarm in his voice.

  I just shrugged. I knew I had been sloppy with the disc, and I didn’t want to confess that to Trevor. I sat quietly, watching him assess the situation. You could almost see his amazing brain working.

  “You’ve used your power already to help Crane, right? And you’ll use it on the trip, right? Even though we both know the man’s a crook.”

  As always, Trevor didn’t miss much.

  “I admit it’s not great to be helping him,” I said. “But I have to do what I have to do.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, I do. For Hollis and me, I do.”

  “I can’t really put myself in your place,” Trevor said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose your parents. I can’t imagine my life without my mom and dad. So maybe you do have to do what you have to do.”

  One of the things I like best about Trevor Davis — have always liked ever since that first day I met him in kindergarten at PS 78 — is that he can put himself in another guy’s place and really get what he’s going through.

  “I just think you need to look at this from all sides, Leo,” Trevor was saying. “Use some critical thinking.” That was the scientist in him speaking.

  “I have. Trev, look at me. Do I seem nutty or off my rocker? Or am I sobbing uncontrollably?”

  “You seem fine, Leo. I mean, you seem really good but …”

  “But what?”

  “This is today. How will you be tomorrow, or the day after that? Two days ago you were ready to run away, you wanted out of here immediately. And now … I can’t stop you, Leo. I know you’ve made up your mind, but I think it’s really dangerous. Dangerous for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is Crane.”

  “You and Jeremy,” I sighed. “You guys think everything I’m doing is so dangerous.”

  “Maybe because it’s true, buddy.”

  “Listen, Trev, even though you’re not going, I need you with me on this. And I want you to help me when I get back…. I’ve been thinking that maybe I should use my power to see what’s beyond the grave.”

  “Oh boy, now you’re talking crazy, man, even for you. But tell you what, I want you to promise that when you get back, you’ll let me take you to a lab or a hospital or something and do some serious tests. If your power is for real, then it belongs to science.”

  “So you’re not going to hold this trip against me?”

  “Just until we’re thirty. Then I’ll let it go.”

  We slapped each other five. As we hugged it out, I heard Crane’s raised voice from the next room.

  “You. Why are you still here, you filthy beatnik? I asked you to leave minutes ago. I ought to chop off your ponytail for trespassing.”

  Trevor and I dashed down the hall where Crane was pointing angrily at Jeremy, who was sitting in a chair in the Sword Room.

  “It’s okay, Uncle Crane. Jeremy was just here to visit me,” I hollered.

  “Ah, Leo, hello, my boy!” Crane said. “I was just on my way to your room when I encountered this disheveled hepcat perched on my furniture.”

  “I’m just waiting for the elevator,” Jeremy said. “Trust me, man, I don’t want to be here, either.”

  Crane walked to the intercom and pressed the speaker button.

  “Klevko!�
� he boomed into it. “What’s taking so long, you slow donkey? I need you to show this bum out, and make it the hard way.”

  “Coming right up, boss.” Klevko’s voice sounded frantic, and I thought I heard Olga yelling in Polish in the background. The poor guy couldn’t catch a break — he was getting it from all sides.

  Crane turned to me and got what appeared to be an actual smile on his face. “In the meantime, Leo, I’ve brought you a gift for the trip, the Rolls-Royce of digital recorders, the Zoom H4n.”

  “The Zoom H4n! No way.”

  “Think about the price you’re paying for it, Leo,” Jeremy whispered, his eyes practically boring a hole into mine.

  Crane was holding a box for the H4n in his hands. My dad had bought me the Zoom H1, and it was my trusty tool, but the H4n, that thing was legendary.

  “Wow,” Trevor said. “Those things cost a small fortune.” His comment made Crane take notice of him standing behind me.

  “What’s this, Leo? Is that your gangly friend, Trevor the traitor? What is this, Leo, some kind of setup? Are you trying to double-cross me?”

  “No, no, no, Uncle Crane. It’s cool.”

  “Ice storms are cool.”

  “I mean, everything’s fine, Uncle Crane. They both stopped by on their own, because they couldn’t reach me by phone. They just wanted to see if I was all right.”

  “Why wouldn’t you be all right? You’re in my care.” Then, turning to Jeremy and Trevor, he dismissed them both with a wave of hand. “Now that you’ve seen that Leo is fine, please leave at once. Leo, you may ride with them down the elevator, and after you’ve said your good-byes, you can pick up your new toy from me. I’ll be in the Cloud Room.”

  Crane sat down on a black leather couch in front of the giant-screen TV and flipped it to the news.

  “You just missed it, Uncle Crane,” I said. “Mike Hazel apologized.”

  “Of course he did,” he said. “I have half a dozen slobbering tearful apologies from him in my voice mail. It might be too late for the poor fellow, though. I hear that his job is in jeopardy. Now show your associates out, Leo.”

  “Guys, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “We gotta go.”