Chapter 33

Michael Whyte

Except to stop for gas and drinks at a gas station outside of Los Angeles, Michael drove straight through the night. Jim spent most of the time sleeping. Mike was glad. He didn’t think that Jim really understood that someone had blown up their house and tried to kill them. Jim had cried for a while about Hazel, though.

Mike kept glancing at the racquetball in the cup holder. He kept looking at Jim, reclined in his seat with paint all over him. He drove in silence, without music. The sky ahead began to brighten. Where was he going? He didn’t know, and that was the plan. If he didn’t know, they couldn’t possibly predict it. October Industries. He made sure to take random turns every once in a while, but maintained a general eastward course.

He tried calling Alan Sheppard, but had no luck. So when the cloudless sky ahead was becoming pale with the approaching day and his phone buzzed on his lap, he answered it immediately.

“Hello.”

“Uh, hey Mike. This is Isaac, Isaac Milton.”

Mike thought back to Isaac’s story he had just read. The edits he had made were all gone; his computer had not made it out of the house. “Isaac? It’s six in the morning.”

“Oh yeah. It’s seven here. I was trying to call Jim, but his phone is like disconnected or something.”

“You know Jim sleeps in. Is something wrong?”

“Well…” Something in Isaac’s voice made Mike focus and forget his tiredness. Isaac sounded afraid. “Yeah something’s wrong. Like, really wrong, Mike. I think Jim knows something.”

Mike was silent for a moment. He thought of the stacked discs, still in a box in the back seat. Had Isaac been attacked? “Something’s wrong over here too,” Mike said. “Jim’s asleep. Tell me.”

Mike heard Isaac take a deep breath. “Okay. Has Jim said anything to you about a drawing he called ‘Black?’ Like, that’s its name. Hello? Still there?”

Mike had been avoiding the interstates. He was driving roughly toward the sunrise on a deserted highway, and he now pulled over to a stop. Jim stirred in his sleep. Mike put the car in park and turned to look at Black , still in the back seat where they had left it yesterday. “Yeah,” he finally answered Isaac. “I’m looking at it right now.”

“Wait, you’re looking at it? Uh, describe it.”

“It’s a three-by-four canvas covered in black paint.”

“So he painted it. I guess I got the rough draft. He sent it to me in the mail. Okay, Mike, can you see a person in it?”

“No. Jim said something like that, but to me it’s just black.”

“You have to look at it just right. It’s in the texture. Anyway, maybe you’ll think this is crazy, but the person that’s in the picture, I think he’s here in Pikeston.”

Mike suddenly remembered what Jim had said: he had already found someone, and he’d already painted them, and he had thought that Isaac might be in danger. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“A guy came into town last night. No, he’s not, I mean, he’s not a regular person. I don’t know. But he killed at least five people last night, and I was there. I’m okay. But he’s still around, I guess. And also there’s…”

“There’s what?”

“Uh, has Jim said anything about, maybe, like, a crack in the sky?”

“No, but that sounds like the name of one of his paintings from a couple months ago.”

“Can you send me a picture of it?”

No more computer. But Mike thought his camera was here. He twisted around again and saw it in the back seat. There might be a way. “I think so. Isaac, what’s going on?”

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“I don’t know! I think Jim might know something. Or Kate.”

“Or Alan Sheppard?”

“You know Mr. Sheppard?”

Mike leaned back and looked ahead in the brightening dawn. “Listen, Isaac, someone blew up our house last night. I think it was these people called October Industries. We both made it out okay, but I also think, maybe, your other friends might be in trouble too. Can you let them know?”

Silence. Then, “Whoa. Sure, yeah. Okay. Also, when Jim wakes up, ask him if he knows anything else about Black, okay? Or about angels.”

“Angels?”

“Yeah. I mean, anything special about them. Like something only he would know. In the context of what we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“All right,” said Isaac. “Don’t take Jim to Vegas.”

Michael cringed. An old joke, and not a very good one.

“Gotta go now,” Isaac continued.

“Okay,” said Mike. “And if you die…”

“‘Die with honor,’ yeah I know.”

“But seriously, be careful.”

“Got it. You too. Take care of Jim.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Mike ended the call and kept gazing ahead at the rising sun. Bad. This was bad. Some guy who’s “not a regular person” wanders into Pikeston, Montana and kills a few people? He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Man, he was tired. They should find a little hotel somewhere. What if the other kids were in danger? What if…

He felt a strange tightening in his chest. What if AJ was in danger? It seemed possible. She was involved in this too, wasn’t she? Yes, because she’d found a painting Jim hadn’t painted yet. Mike looked once more at his slumbering brother.

“Die with honor,” he said with a small smile. That was what he’d always said to Isaac, Eric and Jim when they’d gone out to play together as kids. ‘If you die…’ (looking very serious and noble) ‘…die with honor.’ That’s how it went. And they’d play along, being very solemn and treating their potential honorable deaths with gravity.

Mike owed a great debt to Isaac and Eric. When Jimothy was young he didn’t get picked on, or bullied, but the other kids just avoided him. Because he was weird, and different. Strangely good at some things, like drawing or playing games, and strangely bad at others, like math and memory. And Jim always knew exactly where everyone was in a game of hide-and-seek. And no matter how big or complex a jigsaw puzzle was, Jim would look at the picture for a second and then pick up piece after piece and put it exactly where it went, even if that meant it was just floating out in empty space by itself for a while before the pieces connected to it were filled in. Mike had never tried getting Jim to solve a blank puzzle, because that felt a little too much like doing experiments on him, but he thought it wouldn’t make a difference.

So naturally, other kids didn’t know what to do with Jim. But then Isaac and Eric came along when Jim was in second grade and Mike was in High School. That had changed everything for Jim.

Mike sighed. The sun was mere seconds away from peeking over the horizon ahead, and he himself was mere minutes from falling asleep. Yeah, he’d go into the next town and find them a hotel room or something. They could regroup, make a plan. Maybe at this point the best plan would be blindfolding Jim and having him randomly point to a location on a map of the US. And then go there. That would actually work. Almost certainly, Jim would randomly select the optimal destination.

But first…

Mike got out of the car and stretched. He needed to use the restroom. He looked both ways: it was a long straight stretch of road, cutting through low scrub brush, and it was deserted. He walked around his car to shield some of the view from the road, and urinated into the ditch.

The sun came into view. He looked into it and squinted. His eyes felt gritty. When he finished, he opened the back door of the car and pulled out Black . He turned his back to the sun and held the painting up before him in the sunlight. He tilted it this way and that.

There was a figure hiding in all the black paint. And when he looked at the paint itself very closely, he saw that it was composed of slightly different shades of black. How there could be shades of black he wasn’t sure, but the overall effect was one of blacker-than-blackness. As though the rectangle he held up against the morning sky was a window into a void of oblivion.

His brother was a genius. Who else could paint this?

He put it back in the car. He didn’t know what it meant, but Jim wanted to burn it? Well, if Jim still thought they should get rid of it, that’s what they’d do.

Mike got back in the driver’s seat, started the engine, and pulled back onto the road. Sunlight glared on the windshield so much he could hardly see. A town lay up ahead somewhere. They’d rest there for a while.