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  “So they have venom? You mean their bite’s poisonous? We learned all about that in school with spiders and rattlesnakes. Even some fish!” Little Stevie melted into a fit of apoplectic giggles.

  “But NOT mushrooms!” Stephen Sr. laughed, shaking his head, tousling his son’s hair the way his own father used to do— and he felt them.

  At the crown of little Stevie’s head was a small knot. Two actually. The boy had taken a bad fall at school while learning about the Great War. Luckily he didn’t lose consciousness, but Stephen Sr. didn’t think he was feeling lumps from that fall—and it was way too early.

  It was a good thing little Stevie was going to the office today. They both would be meeting the Boss, and hopefully get some much needed advice. Even though Stevie was younger than the other sons being brought to work today, Stephen Sr. knew—as his father had told him often—the younger the better.

  “And the birds, dad? What about them? What if birds were really being piloted by something else like people and—”

  “You mean like airplanes?”

  “Well, sort of. But what about them—whatchacallums? Dimensors? We learned about them in class, with space and time and it’s bigger on the inside.”

  “Dimensions. What about them? You’ll be learning all about those soon enough.”

  “How d’ya travel ‘em? I mean, could a person, walking down the street, suddenly go into a different di-men-shun?”

  “Maybe. Not likely. Not on a normal day. Maybe on a Tuesday. Something always bothers me about Tuesdays.’

  “Daaad. That makes NO sense,” Stevie laughed, clapping his long slender hands over his mouth. His nails were long. Stephen Sr. raised an eyebrow. Too early.

  The train hiccuped, ambled, burped and then stopped with a hiss. A smell of flatulence percolated in the air.

  “Dad! Did you do a creepy-up-the-wall?” Stevie melted into another maniacal giggle fit.

  “No, son. We’re here. Quick now, before we miss the connection and I’d rather not deal with Charon today. I didn’t bring any of his precious coins and the last time I used quarters, he rocked the boat so much that I thought I was going to fall out—and I barfed in my mouth a bit too. Not happy about that. So, move it kiddo.”

  “So, the office smells like farts?”

  “Sort of. You get used to it, I suppose, sort of like working at a chemical factory. Except this is what sulfur smells like.”

  “Like farts.”

  “Yeah, like farts. Burnt farts.”

  The train doors slid open with an audible groan. Stevie thought it was a happy, contented sigh—but it was most definitely a groan. Beyond stretched a long, dimly lit black causeway. Stevie was expecting a platform, sort of like the one at Union Square or at Platform 9 ¾. Nope. Just a long black stretch of stone, leading in one direction—away.

  It reminded him of one of those expansive bridges made by the dwarves in Moria—like the one Gandalf met the Balrog on. That part of the book—and, yes, the film (try as Stephen Sr. might, little Stevie did like those blasted films; PJ had certainly made one of the best deals with the Boss)—that part had become Stevie’s all-time favorite. Especially, after Stevie’s mum said the Balrog resembled her father.

  Several lines of darkly attired male and female shapes exited the train in columns. It was casual Friday, so there were a few pairs of jeans and a smattering of dark T-shirts, some with logos (little Stevie liked one a slender woman wore—“I feel a Sin coming on” embellished in sparkles) and only a few Rock shirts. Though, Stephen Sr. smiled—not a single Black Sabbath or Judas Priest. Damned posers. He was happy to see a Lionel Richie and Michael Bolton though. Those were good deals too, how else could those guys get ahead—talent? Please.

  Regardless, though, many of those exiting the train in what seemed to little Stevie like an endless line, wore suits—pinstriped and herringbone and the occasional tweed—but all in shades of black and grey. There was also a fondness for bowler hats and forked beards.

  The first, loudest specks of color anywhere came from the red of everyone’s hair. Some were pure ruby red. Some were more raspberry, even bordering on magenta. Most weren’t bottle-augmented, however, being their original tones of copper, bronze, and burnished brass, like flickering tongues of flame.

  As little Stevie looked into several faces, he noticed the only other bit of color came from their eyes. Many, like Stevie and his dad, had brilliant emerald eyes. Some were gold, others violent shades of purple or blue. But, all were unique, unusual, gemlike, and decidedly not quite human.

  Stevie noted one man, barrel-chested, plowing through the line behind them. His eyes were mismatched—one a vicious silvery blue, the other an obnoxious shade of violet.

  “Eya! Stephen!” He called, waving his large, muscular arms. The line stopped abruptly, for a moment or two as another line began to merge into the main one just up ahead.

  “Is this your lil’Master? Little Stevie, ain’t it? Well, my lad, you ain’t so lil’nuh’more,” said the barrel-chested, man with his mismatched eyes and waist-length copper hair in a great braid as wide as his wrist, trailing down his back. His forked beard, a shade darker than his hair, was likewise braided and wound with what looked like copper wire set with small red gemstones. He looked like a Viking, except for the fact that he came barely up to Stevie’s father’s shoulder. He was a head higher than little Stevie. Perhaps more like Thorin Oakenshield the dwarf—except Stevie highly doubted Thorin ever wore a black and grey pinstriped suit jacket, a matching kilt, or a bowler hat. The man was made even more comical because he wore black and white checkered suspenders and a matching bow-tie. He was bare-chested beneath his jacket and didn’t wear any shoes. He did have on a pair of knee-high, black and white striped socks though.

  “Aye, this is the lad.” Stevie’s father growled, his voice taking on a similar accent to the barrel-chested man—almost a Scotch brogue, but not quite. They both spoke the way someone from Staten Island would imagine a Scotsman spoke. Stevie stared alternately at his father and the little man. As Stevie watched his dad, he noticed one of his dad’s green eyes turned a shocking shade of purple. The other one stayed green though.

  “I’m takin’ him to the Man Himself,” Stephen Sr. smiled.

  “Och! Good luck with that—not tha’y’ll be needin’ it. Wha’ w’all his schoolin’ and such like.” The man paused while the columns, still pouring from the train sort of like one of those clown cars little Stevie saw at the circus last year, began moving again.

  “Let’s walk Stephen, my lad. They’ll be holdin’ the connection fer a bit, since there’s t’New Acquisitions conference t’day. And ol’ Chary wud be mighty piss’d should this lot flood ta boats. An on a Frey-dae make no mistake.”

  Stevie’s father took the man’s hand and began walking alongside, moving with the crowd. Stevie lost focus on the conversation his father was having with the barrel-chested man. He was too busy watching the myriad of folk about him. He noticed there weren’t any boys his age. He thought it was a Daddy & Me day. There were some lads a few years older, but not his age. Some of the boys even looked like teenagers, but not a one that looked under ten.

  As the three of them got into a definite queue for their connection, Stevie’s father tousled his hair again, laughing. “Aye, he’s an early bloomer.” The man said, looking at his son with pride and a fierce smile.

  “I’ll wish ya luck again—both of ya. Where’ya be goin’ todae?”

  “Thieves. Fifth level. Och the joys of this world never do fail t’please,” Stevie’s father moaned.

  “That’s Fourth level, that is,” the barrel-chested man laughed.

  “Seventh, anyone knows that,” growled the woman in the queue behind them.

  “Whatever, flipping level it is—that’s where we’ll be,” Stevie’s father gritted his teeth, his smile looking decidedly more savage. Stevie noted how sharp his father’s teeth looked and that his father’s eyes, both his eyes, took on a reddish hue. />
  “We’re off!” Barked the barrel-chested man as they reached the end of the platform, and he stepped off the edge into a void.

  Stevie peered down a sheer drop and saw a roiling churning swirl of beetle-black cloud. As it churned, sparks in a kaleidoscope of color flew out. It reminded him of a black hole—yet unlike. The barrel-chested man was suspended at the center for a moment, and then vanished wholly with an audible pop.

  Stevie’s father took his hand and they both stepped off the edge of the platform. It was like standing in a pool of mud, not uncomfortable, but strange. The air curdled around him and with a POP he found himself standing on a red, marble floor with the burned fart smell stinging his nostrils. He heard a crackling in the air above him. Looking up, he saw an expanse of black wings laced with red—like the cooling crust on top of molten lava.

  “Borris!” Stevie’s father cried happily. “How’re you doin’, you old Devil?”

  A large creature, the size of a Volkswagen bus sat between those molten-lava wings. It had a mane of smoke and eyes the color of fire opals. He wore a singed black T-shirt with the logo for the Broadway musical Cats.

  “The Boss wants you before you get started. And, there’s donuts left upstairs. The little guy can ride shotgun.” The massive creature knelt and Stevie’s father climbed onto it’s back, pulling his son up to sit in front of him.

  “Hold on little man,” Borris purred in a voice not unlike the reverberation from a rather large tomcat. “We’ve got a big day and I don’t fancy picking you out of the river. The last lad to fall in the Styx had to sleep it off for a fortnight before he could go home.”

  “The Lethe, you mean Borris. Styx burns em. Lethe puts ‘em to sleep,” Stevie’s dad laughed.

  “Same difference. Hold on.” With a clap of thunder, Borris spread his wings. “If we get there fast, there might be some Boston Cream left.”

  Hungry Snow

  The talking heads all over the news called the coming Christmas Day storm that had hit all of the mid-west, “Snowicane,” “Snowapocalypse,” and “Snowmageddon.” Colorful in a tired, clichéd sort of way, but nowhere near my own experience. I bet each of the brainless newscasters lived in high rise apartments and sent someone else outside to dig out—their staff, some illegal, a random kid or unemployed adult trying to make some cash.

  For us, out here in the suburbs, the forgotten perimeter of the city, it was pretty wretched. Mom had told me to shutter my windows, close the curtains and stay away from the front and side doors. Mom had always been a bit eccentric. I had to humor her—especially when she began ranting about how the electricity leaked out of outlets and escaped into the air. If I didn’t nod incredulously and tell her I’d make sure all the outlets were blocked off—with plugs or those little doohickeys that prevent dimwitted children from sticking fat baby fingers in the holes—she’d really start diatribing. My mom thought she had a personal doctor that lived in her closet who was there to tend the hole her head. I loved my mom, but telling me to shutter out the snow was just another one of her idiosyncrasies that I had learned to live with during my 14 years on this little blue planet.

  I couldn’t take my eyes from the luminescent sparkle quietly enshrouding the world outside as the snow lightly fell. I wanted to watch it engulf my moronic neighbor’s yard all day. My moronic neighbor we had always called The Burner, because of his tendency to burn treated 2x4s in his fireplace and stink out the neighborhood with acrid black eye-burning smoke. I did manage to steal some time watching from my bedroom window while mom was in the bathroom. In less than 20 minutes, there was a dense covering that swallowed up The Burner’s yard. Mom’s mutters at the base of the stairs alerted me to her daily constitutional being complete—and warned me that a diatribe would be imminent should I not batten down the hatches. I reluctantly tore my gaze away to pull the metal shutters closed on the inside of all the windows. The mutters ceased as the bolts clanged home on the top, bottom and sides of each set of shutters.

  Our house became a fortress after Jimmy had disappeared. I remember when I was real little the way he used to make up stories while we watched thunderstorms from those same bedroom windows. We even watched a hurricane together. Well, I thought it was a hurricane. Dad called it a Nor’easter. But Mom never had a problem with us watching from those windows—or any windows in the house…not until Jimmy....

  Mom huffed and muttered her way up the stairs to shutter her room as well. That was something else that had changed when big brother went missing: mom didn’t like me in her room. Jimmy and I had always played in mom and dad’s room—especially in the closet. We used to make believe it was the Starship Enterprise. Now she freaked out if I tried getting a towel from the closet if we ran out of them in the bathroom. Last month when I ran out of clean towels, I waited for more than a quarter of an hour, dripping wet and shivering in the shower, while she shuffled and mumbled in her bedroom. I finally dried off on my dirty clothes and streaked across the hall.

  As I heard the last shutter close in her room, I mentally wished everyone on the outside well. With any luck, mom would calm down after she talked to dad later, and maybe I could go outside and investigate the aftermath. I stood at the top of the stairs, thankful that mom had done a massive shopping a few days earlier. If she didn’t calm down and if she hadn’t gone shopping, we’d be stuck in this shuttered tomb until after the New Year—when Dad was scheduled to come back from his trip.

  Every Christmas since Jimmy had vanished, Dad made sure he was involved in some event elsewhere. He worked with organizing big parties for rich folks and politicians. He would sometimes leave the day after Thanksgiving and not come back until the day after New Years. And he almost always went somewhere where there wouldn’t be any snow. This year he was in Dubai. I didn’t know where Dubai was, but my teacher said it was someplace with lots of sand. I don’t think she knew where it was either.

  I scuffed my feet on the edge of each step as I went down. There was a slice of shepherd’s pie in the fridge with my name on it and if mom became a little less crazy town, I might even make some hot cocoa.

  Over the next few hours, we kept ourselves occupied with reading in the living room. Once the shutters had been closed, mom’s nerves did quiet—with the help of a little Saint Germaine, a sweet liquor, she kept for such instances in the cupboard above the fridge. I munched on my pie while walking the pages of Gaiman’s Sandman, fascinated with Morpheus and his sisters. Mom sipped her flowery cocktail from a plastic cup with a Deanna Roberts romance in hand.

  Crack. Whump. Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

  The house shook. I jumped to my feet, my nearly empty plate clattered to the floor, scattering bits of shepherd’s pie and utensils amongst the mass of blankets I had been curled in. Pattycake, our 9-year-old calico, chided me for disturbing her slumber with a mild hiss. Tail bristling, she ran into the slightly open hall closet.

  Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeump. Thump. Crackle.

  This time, the house didn’t reverberate, but the metal shutters on the bay window at the front of the living room rattled dully.

  “It’s the wind, mom,” I said quietly as she pulled her legs into a fetal position in her armchair and started whispering to herself in that fanatical speed that made the back of my neck creep, her cup and novel were clutched against her knees. She grasped the cup so tightly that the thin plastic had cracked and the remnants of her cocktail were dribbling down the cup and onto her legs. It looked like she had dirty pee pants again. I hated that. She didn’t seem to be remotely aware. I knew I was in for a real trip, regardless of the weather situation. Mom on a bender was getting to be routine.

  “Probably a mess of snow,” I said, swallowing hard, “fell off the roof or something. Not a big deal. Want me to check?”

  I ventured toward the shutter and she shrieked a terse NO while throwing her novel and fractured cup onto the table beside her.

  “Games. Let’s try some games!” Her voice was a high-pitched chatter that raked across
my back and the top of my head. “Stay alert. Dad should call soon!” She bounded over the neglected crumbs of my dinner and the tangled blankets, yanked open the closet, ignored Patty’s yowl from the depths beneath hanging coats and forgotten suits. Her fingers absently caressed the smallish, black suit she had bought to bury Jimmy in should his body ever be recovered. Snapping into the now, she took down a stack of everything from Wizard Chess and Lord of the Rings Monopoly, to plain old checkers and a stack of messy looking index cards with a warped game board attached by rubber bands.

  The year before Jimmy was gone, I had been pretty irritated that The Powers That Be hadn’t seen fit to make a Doctor Who version of Trivial Pursuit. Jimmy and I had started making our own game. I rescued an old game board from my aunt’s closet, along with some of those wedge-piece thingies. I made all the categories: Whoniverse Geography—which dealt with places the Doctor visited, Doctor Who Entertainment—which was all about the BBC, the novels, audios and stuff like that, Galactic History—which is obvious, The People of Doctor Who—which has characters and actors, Science—again, obvious, The Nature of Time, and, my personal favorite, TARDIS extras.

  I was happy mom took down that game. We hadn’t touched it since Jimmy’s memorial service. I had quite forgotten about it. I mean, it had been more than 3 years. Maybe after a few rounds of chess, she’d help me with those questions about the TARDIS swimming pool.

  Jim had been the genuine Whovian in the family, Jim and Dad. Mom was lackadaisically brought onboard and I pretty much grew up with it. But, Dad had introduced Jim to it, and it was a forgone conclusion that I’d watch too since I did whatever Jim had done. My first Halloween costume, at 3 years old, was as Tom Baker’s Doctor. Mom had made me a scarf and everything. Yeah, she didn’t knit it—ok—but the thought was there. She cut what had to be 10 feet off this beige banquet-hall tablecloth that had been her mother’s and she painted stripes of color on it. I remember she had “Pyramids of Mars” on pause for hours while she painted the stripes in the right order and size. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have the colors exactly right, I mean she was using poster paint and that purple wasn’t the same as the Doctor’s purple. Still, I fondly remember tripping over the striped ends while pursuing a Snickers bar on Mrs. Wilkie’s front porch. Jim had been dressed like Omega with this weird paper maché head that he had made himself in art class. To have the robe just right, he spray-painted his bathrobe in metallic colors. He had to hang onto my hand and dad’s hand while we trick-or-treated because the eye-holes on the Omega head didn’t match up exactly. But, hey, it was a damned good try for a 10-year-old kid.