Oliver

  The most merciful thing in the world, I think,

  is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

  He sat against the wall between the lunchroom entrance and the custodial closet, mechanically eating his peanut butter sandwich and watching the big glass front doors. Amrita hadn’t been in Biology, and everything was wrong. He’d waited for half the lunch period before he took a bite just in case she’d shown up late and wanted to eat with him, but no one had come through those doors since he sat down. Is she mad? Did she change her mind? Are psycho cultists holding her hostage?

  He surreptitiously reached into his jacket pocket and stroked the Kraken where it lay warm and quiescent, waiting for who knew what or maybe just sleeping. If he told it to attack someone, would it? He imagined throwing it in Ms. Gilman’s face and wondered what would have happened if he did. She’s already dead. He wished he hadn’t thought of that.

  He also wished he knew where Amrita’s locker was, where she normally sat for lunch. He wanted to prowl the halls looking, but he didn’t dare leave his post in case she came in. His anxiety was mounting, and every dead-eyed student that shuffled past made it worse. Are they watching me? Do they know?

  “Everything all right, pal?”

  Olly jumped. Officer LeGrasse was standing beside him, thumbs hooked behind his belt, not even looking at him.

  “Uh, fine. I’m good.” He withdrew his hand from his pocket and tried to look casual.

  “Never seen you sitting in the hall before.”

  Oliver gaped at him mentally but kept a straight face. LeGrasse had never said a single word to him, never done more than slide his eyes right past as he squatted on his throne in the lunchroom. All he could think of was the toad-like officer urinating on the Ambrose house as it burned. “I was just… waiting to see if my friend showed up.”

  The man cleared his throat, hoisting his sagging police belt up underneath his massive belly. “None of these sheep is worth two shits. All the kids around here… they’re the wrong type.” He squinted down at him. “Get me?”

  Olly felt like a deer in the headlights. “Yes sir.”

  LeGrasse looked away with a satisfied grunt. “You need anything, I’m never far. Your dad said to keep an eye out.”

  “You know my dad?”

  “We go way back. Not friends, exactly, but… like-minded. Walter knows the score.”

  The policeman didn’t give him a deep look or waggle his eyebrows or anything, but Oliver had no doubt exactly what he was saying. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “You just give a yell if any of them little creeps gets in your business, okay?”

  “Will do.” The conversation felt utterly surreal, and Oliver wasn’t sure how to respond. Should I shake his hand or something? Is there a special handshake?

  LeGrasse was gone before he could muster up the courage to put out his hand, and Olly was grateful. As nice as it was to think that someone with some actual authority might be on his side now, he’d spent so many years keeping to himself that the attention made him feel exposed. He wished he could talk to Amrita about the odd conversation, or maybe even his dad.

  He and his father had talked until the early hours of the morning in the old cemetery, but he’d never mentioned the policeman. Oliver didn’t blame him – his dad was trying to impart decades of knowledge all at once. He hadn’t had time to pass him the church attendance sheet. They’d sat there watching the Little Ones gather – most of them wanted to crawl into Olly’s lap – and talked of space, and time, and the perfect order of the universe. Despite the strangeness of the situation, Oliver had loved it. He’d spent more time with his dad in a single night than he usually got in a whole year.

  Despite that, he wasn’t sure what to think about the whole thing. He needed to talk to Amrita, to show her what he’d hidden in his pocket. Somehow, over the course of just a couple of days, she’d become the one person he trusted to actually hear him and talk about it all even-handedly, even as she made a crude joke about it and maybe kissed him again. Even if she didn’t, though – even if she was disgusted by the Kraken and the thing in his head and never touched him again – he needed her input, her help. Why isn’t she here? Something’s wrong, I can feel it.

  “Screw this,” he said, standing up. He had to do something. LeGrasse was out of view, the only kids he saw nearby were facing away, and there was no way he was sitting through two more hours of this torture. He’d already skipped class once this week to burn down a house; what was one more absence? All your talk about order and community – you sure you weren’t just waiting for an excuse to break all those rules? Another day the thought might have sent him into a tailspin of self-doubt, but now his concern for Amrita smashed it flat and spurred him out the front door.

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  His bike was locked up in the rack to the left, and once he had it untangled from all the others he hoofed it toward the parking lot so he wouldn’t pass by the front office windows. The secretary was a lump of a woman named Mrs. Donovan; he had no idea which side of Olmstead’s silent war she fell on, but he had no doubt that she’d call his father if she saw him riding off truant. For all he had enjoyed spending the night talking to his dad, Olly didn’t want him knowing he was looking for Amrita.

  Miskatonic Pond was six miles away, and he remembered where it was on the town maps he’d studied. Not for the first time, he wished he’d ever bothered to get his license. Not like he had a car anyway, and not like he could just take his dad’s old Corolla from the accounting office during the middle of the day. The car didn’t run very well with him behind the wheel anyway – the headlights and radio would always go out if he sat in the driver’s seat. If the car were any newer it probably wouldn’t work for him at all. Still, the thought of not being stuck on his ten-speed stressing out for the next forty-five minutes was really attractive. Olly put his anxiety into his legs and pushed. I’ll make it in thirty.

  He stopped at Edgewood Park just in case she’d stayed home sick. He wound his way through the twisted paths and stopped around the corner from the Rajani house. He didn’t dare knock or talk to her parents – he was worried they’d know he liked her or ask him about cancer again – and he certainly didn’t want to talk to crazy Mrs. Porter, who might just decide to forcibly administer an enema for his own good. Instead, he peeked around the corner and watched. Amrita’s mom stood on the porch smoking a cigarette and staring at nothing, her hands jittering aimlessly against the railing. She shifted, looked in all directions, slumped back into a porch chair, and took a long, shaky drag. Her worry could have been about anything, but Oliver just knew it was about Amrita. That was the look of a woman who didn’t know where her child was. She hadn’t been home.

  Oliver was on the highway again in two minutes, pedaling hard. It was only a little further, and he kept imagining Amrita bound to some altar like the one they’d found in the Ambrose basement. Sometimes she was chained and swearing as faceless figures crowded around her, and others she was dead, blood pooling under her and eyes glazed open. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

  WHAT IS IT YOU FEAR?

  Oliver almost wrecked his bike as he jumped at the sound in his head. He wobbled and veered into the far lane before recovering. It was a good thing the highway was deserted.

  “Are you talking to me?” he panted.

  YOUR HEART BEATS FASTER THAN YOUR MOVEMENT REQUIRES. YOUR HANDS PERSPIRE. YOU MAKE SMALL VOCAL SOUNDS OF WHICH YOU DO NOT APPEAR AWARE. THIS IS FEAR?

  “Yes, I’m scared.”

  WHY?

  “I think my friend is in trouble.”

  There was a long silence in his head, and Oliver wondered if the inscrutable thing in his brain had gone back to ignoring him again.

  WHAT IS FRIEND?

  Olly shook his head, baffled. “It’s… somebody that’s important to me.”

  DO THEY FEED YOU?

  “What? No.”

  DO THEY INCREASE YOUR STRENGTH? YOUR POWER?

  “No, it’s not like that.”

  THEN THIS PERSON HAS NO VALUE.

  “Yes, they do, I just don’t know how to describe it. Have you seriously been watching through my eyes my whole life and you still don’t know what a friend is?”

  IT HAS TAKEN LONG TO FIT MY SENSES TO YOURS. YOU HAVE SO FEW. WE WILL GROW MORE NOW THAT I HAVE LEARNED TO LIMIT MYSELF TO YOUR SPEECH.

  “Swell.” Olly wavered between awe at the feel of the voice filling his head and annoyance at its words. “Now let me pay attention so I can find her, please.”

  DO NOT FEAR. I WILL NOT LET YOU BE HARMED.

  “Thanks. Though if that means me barfing up more Little Ones, maybe let’s not, please?”

  I HAVE MULTIPLIED SUFFICIENTLY FOR OUR CURRENT TASK.

  “Oh. Good? Yeah, I’m gonna say that’s good.”

  YES, THE OFFSPRING ARE GOOD. IT IS RIGHT THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THIS.

  Olly wasn’t at all sure that he understood any of it, but there was the sign for Miskatonic Pond, so he pulled off into the tiny dirt parking lot. There, in the far corner, lay the pink banana seat bike they’d stolen together yesterday. Amrita had been here, and if she left, it wasn’t by the same way she came. His adrenaline spiked, and he pedaled his bike out onto the trail, heedless of the bumps and jolts of the unpaved dirt.

  DO NOT HARM YOURSELF.

  “I won’t! But we have to go fast.”

  SPEED IS IMMATERIAL. TIME IS MEANINGLESS.

  “Uhhh… sure, if you say so, but not for me. Not right now.”

  They sped through a clearing that had a bunch of old, moldy statue things. Any other day Oliver would have been fascinated; he’d have taken notes and maybe even borrowed his dad’s big camera to come take pictures. As it was, he hardly saw the things before he blew through them and back into the trees.

  WE APPROACH A PLACE OF DANGER.

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m worried. How do you know that?”

  YOUR FLESH HAS NOT DEADENED ALL MY SENSES. I CAN FEEL THE ENEMY.

  I knew it. “Like the big octopus thing under the library?”

  UNKNOWN. BE CAUTIOUS.

  Oliver jolted his way free of the trees and braked to a stop just before the edge of the pond. It was huge and green and quiet, the green above blending with the green of the water below. The place was utterly silent. Deserted. He looked around for the altar he’d feared, for the evidence of Amrita’s capture and death, but there was nothing. Just trees and water. He let his bike fall to the dirt.

  “Amrita!” he shouted as loud as possible.

  THAT IS NOT CAUTIOUS.

  “Shut up! I have to find her.”

  IF THE ONE YOU SEEK CAME HERE, SHE IS ENDED. THE FALLEN ONE TOLERATES NO INTRUSION IN HIS DOMAIN.

  “No, she is not ended. I came to help. She said she’d be fine. Amrita! AMRITA!”

  His voice raced out over the water and came back in a mocking echo. A bird flitted up from a small island out on the water. Nothing else stirred. Oliver sat in the dirt and put his head in his hands.

  “I should have gone with her.”

  The voice inside him said nothing, and for that at least he was glad. He looked out over the eerily still pond, his mind empty. The Kraken crawled from his pocket and into his hand as if it wanted to comfort him, and he stroked its warm, glittering skin. He had no ideas, no plans left. He’d done everything he could, and it had meant nothing. Amrita was dead, and he’d barely even gotten to know her.

  A disturbance in the water caught his eye. It was a ripple small enough he’d have never noticed it were it not for the fact that the water was so glass-flat. It was a dimple in the water almost like a fishing line being dragged ashore, except it wavered lazily from side to side.

  WE HAVE BEEN SEEN. YOU MUST LEAVE.

  Oliver got to his feet, staring at the erratic ripple on the water. It held still for a moment and then changed course, the disturbance getting bigger as it moved faster and got closer.

  Whatever it was, it was coming straight at him.