Scorpion Shards by Neal Shusterman
Bayless looked at them and sighed. The answers they needed were clearly not easy to come by. Bayless pondered his inoperable telescope for a moment, then turned back to them decisively.
“Science can’t help you,” said Bayless. “Not unless you want to wait and see what they find in your autopsies.”
The thought made Winston shiver, and he swore he could feel himself shrink a fraction of an inch.
“Then what do you suggest?” said Michael, his breathing heavier, his voice even more impatient than it had been an hour ago.
Bayless thought about it, sighed in resignation, and reached into his bottom drawer, pulling out an old deck of cards that looked like they hadn’t been used in ages.
“When I was young, my mother made me read cards for rich old women. I once told a woman she was going to die before the sun went down. She stormed out of the tent in a huff and was promptly trampled by the fair’s elephant.”
Michael stood engulfed in his own growing frustration. “We need real help and real answers, can’t you see that? We didn’t come all this way to read dumb old tarot cards!”
“And I didn’t get degrees in biology and astrophysics to read dumb old tarot cards, but here we are, aren’t we?”
Michael, his breathing helplessly heavy, his body uncontrollably tense, his pants unrelentingly tight, looked to the others. “Are you going to sit here for this garbage?” Clearly his frustration had little to do with tarot cards—so Lourdes gently took his hand.
“Just relax,” she told him. “Take deep breaths. What you’re feeling will go away.”
“No it won’t,” he said. “You know it won’t.”
He shook off Lourdes’s hand and stormed along the arrow on the floor, until he crashed out of the observatory, into the night.
“Don’t mind him,” Winston told Bayless. “He’s just pointing north.”
Tory was about to go after him, but Lourdes stopped her. “He just needs some air,” she said. “He’ll be all right.”
When the echo of Michael’s exit had faded, Bayless returned to shuffling the cards.
“Does it have to be tarot cards?” asked Winston. “Where I come from only ignorant folk use ’em. They’re hard to believe in.”
Bayless continued to shuffle. “It’s not the cards you need to believe in, it’s the skill of the dealer,” he said. He pulled out a card and handed it to Winston. “It’s like playing poker. Any idiot can deal cards—but how many people can deal a straight-flush every time?”
Winston looked at his card. A small boy on a golden ram, racing out of control through the sky. In one hand the boy held a torch that fought to survive a brutal wind. To Winston the boy seemed terrified.
“The Page of Wands,” noted Bayless. “Unless I’ve lost my touch, that card is you.”
Winston studied the card. He didn’t quite know what it meant, but he did have a sense of identification—as if he truly could be this boy clinging helplessly to the back of the wild wooly ram.
“If I wanted to,” said Bayless, “I could tell your fortune with baseball cards and the result would be exactly the same.”
Winston cast his eyes down.
“All right, then,” said Tory. “Deal us a fortune.”
Bayless smiled. “Yes—let’s desecrate the halls of science, shall we?” And with that, he dealt seven cards, face down—six formed a triangle, and the seventh he placed in the triangle’s center.
He reached toward the two cards at the bottom. “If I remember correctly, these cards will show us the present.” He flipped the first one, revealing a cloaked figure in a small boat, navigating a troubled sea.
“Death?” asked Lourdes.
“No, the Six of Swords,” Bayless replied. Winston looked more closely at the card to see a cargo of six swords resting in the keep of the ship. “Six souls on a restless journey.”
“Then there are six of us!” said Tory. “Now we have proof!”
“If you can call this proof,” mumbled Winston.
Bayless flipped the second card. A chariot being torn apart by a black horse and a white horse. Bayless looked at the card, and began to sweat just a bit.
“Death?” asked Lourdes.
“The Charioteer,” said Bayless. “It’s making me uncomfortable, but I don’t know why . . . . See, the horses that pull this chariot are very powerful. They have to be stopped or the chariot will be destroyed.”
“So what does that mean?” asked Winston.
“Not sure yet.”
Bayless went to the next two cards. “These cards will show where your journey must take you.”
He anxiously flipped the first to reveal an image of a tower being destroyed by lightning.
“The Tower. Does the tower mean anything to you?”
The three kids shook their heads.
Bayless nodded. “It will soon.”
He flipped the next card. It showed a dark figure covered in shrouds, in the midst of desolation.
“Death?” asked Lourdes.
“No—the Hermit.” Bayless’s voice was becoming shaky, filled with both fear and wonder. “This is someone you must face . . . if you get that far.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Lourdes, as Bayless began to wring his fingers.
“He frightens me.” Bayless said, confused. “The Hermit shouldn’t frighten me . . .”
His eyes darted between the three kids, and he returned to the cards. “Well, we’ve begun, we have to finish it,” he said. Now Winston was beginning to feel as if he didn’t want to see the rest.
“This is what you will find at journey’s end,” Bayless said. “These two cards are your destiny.”
He reached for the first card, hesitated for a moment, then flipped both cards simultaneously.
Winston looked at the first, and his heart missed a beat. Lourdes didn’t have to say it this time. The masked figure of darkness was unmistakable.
“Death,” said Bayless. “And the Five of Wands.” The second card showed a man and woman with five glowing torches doing battle with a dragon. “Death will surround you. And those who survive will face a greater challenge.”
“What sort of challenge?” whispered Winston.
“If I knew, I would tell you.” Bayless quickly flipped the cards back over so he didn’t have to see them. “I forgot how much I hated telling fortunes.”
“What about the last card?” asked Tory.
Bayless cleared his throat.
“The central card. It binds your past, present and future. History and destiny.” He didn’t even reach for it. “Maybe you don’t want to see this card.”
“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 his 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—ever
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.
At last she was able to force her eyes open. The ruined observatory was silent and still. The only light in the room came from the fading fragments of the telescope lens, which had exploded and sent glass splintering in all directions.
As she finally got to her feet, Tory realized that whatever Dr. Bayless was going to tell them was going to remain his secret. He would be viewing no more stars. He would be telling no more fortunes. Whatever these beasts were, they had not wanted Bayless to tell what he knew. They had caused the explosion—they had come to silence him.
She couldn’t help but feel responsible for what had happened to the astronomer. She felt pity for the man, but even more she felt fury that she was again left with more questions and riddles. It was that fury that overcame her fear, and she decided she wouldn’t run just yet—there were still things she had to do.
She grabbed whatever was left of the books and papers Bayless had pulled out and shoved them in her pack. She found the seven tarot cards scattered on the floor and took them as well, and then found a canvas tarp in the corner and brought it over to Bayless.
Around the room, the light was getting dimmer as the glowing splinters of the lens faded. The lens had shattered into half a dozen pieces. Five of those pieces were embedded in the walls like glass lightning bolts. The sixth had found a much more specific destination.
As Tory covered Bayless’s body, she knew what she had to do—she owed at least that much to the poor man, And so before drawing the canvas over his face, she reached toward the silent astronomer, then took a firm hold of that last shard of crystal and, biting back her terror, pulled it from between Dr. Bayless’s eyes.
THEY FOUND MICHAEL AT the edge of the
He knelt there by the curb, heaving and gripping his stomach.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” demanded Winston.
Tory and Lourdes knelt beside him and helped him stand up.
His face was wet from tears and pale—almost green.
“What happened?” asked Lourdes.
Michael didn’t answer. Instead he just held his stomach and forced his breathing back under control. Finally he said, “I got lost . . . that’s all.” And no one dared to question him further.
They turned and headed off in a direction their internal compass told them was west, while behind them, way down the road, the fire truck stopped in front of a physical plant that was billowing black smoke.
9. LIGHT AND SHADOWS
* * *
THAT NIGHT THE STORM RETURNED WITH A VENGEANCE EVEN before the streets had a chance to dry. The night that had seemed so steamy quickly turned cold, and the sky let loose an unrelenting assault of sleet. It battered the windshield of the van with such fury that they had to pull off to the side of the road and wait.
Tory studied the map; they were somewhere west of Omaha now, in the middle of nowhere, and it occurred to Tory with an awful shiver that they were always in the middle of nowhere. It seemed from the moment her journey had begun, Tory had slipped into the dark festering world that existed between the walls and beneath the floors of the rest of the world. A rat-ridden place filled with the torn, ruined things that nobody wanted. They were all now residents of this waste-world, and the eerie capriciousness of the weather—never deciding on hot or cold, wet or dry—made the rest of humanity seem further and further away. It seemed to Tory that their lives had slipped into a place so dismal that souls perished and only weeds could take their place.
As the sleet pummeled the van, Winston sat in the back with Lourdes, sewing pieces of fabric onto her clothes so that they would still fit.
“Maybe The Others are dead,” Winston dared to whisper at one point. “Maybe they were killed by those monster-things that tried to get us.”