

The Looming Giants

By Papa

Copyright 2016 Billy J. Tidwell

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

The End

Her whole world changed the moment Rosalind Proctor died. No longer restrained, she became unencumbered of this temporal world, and until that moment, she had never realized the burden living placed on her.

Rosalind didn't remember much. She remembered awaking in bed, feeling an excruciating pain in her chest for about ten seconds, and then of feeling lighter than helium, as if the molecules of her entire being suddenly loosened and the body she left behind had somehow phase shifted from solid to gas. Other than that, there was no transition between this world and the next. She crossed no veil, or passed through any barrier that she felt. It was as if like Rosalind had always imagined death being, a permeation into another plane.

Though nothing violent, her death was like easing out of her lab coat at the end of the day. As if a part of her became no longer essential, Rosalind Proctor slipped out of this material world and floated into another with no more effort than an exhale of a sigh.

She recalled seeing her body as that cast-off part of her (This part of her now.) floated over it for a moment or two. She remembered thinking that this would ruin some experiments she had going, but with no alarm. Apparently, Rosalind Proctor was through with being alarmed by the world.

The only thing that stayed with Rosalind was her worry over Hector--that stuck with her. Thoughts of Hector, her little boy, now a grown man, surprised Rosalind--she suddenly knew how he felt all these years. And the pain inside him drew his mother back from her destination, a tether on her heart.

A moment of floating and then, Rosalind stood on the floor of her bedroom. Only a slight pressure where her feet "touched" the ground--although touched might be the wrong word for that--told her this.

She looked around, realizing that the color of everything had waned, not as in a sepia tone but something had washed out the light spectrum. Blue wasn't so blue and red wasn't so red. Perhaps some barrier did exist between her and the world she left? Unsure, as a scientist, Rosalind began devising ways to test this theory, not fully realizing yet that she could not affect it.

Already morning, the light coming through the sheer curtains lit up the room like diminished angel fire, Walter walking in, as was customary, and finding her sloughed-off remainder resting peacefully in bed.

With a breakfast tray in hand, Walter immediately understood what had happened, in Walter's own peculiar way of knowing.

His response, however, surprised Rosalind. Walter slowly sat the tray loaded with coffee, (Just seeing the coffee, a drink she'd always loved, made Rosalind's mouth want to water, though it didn't.) crescents, cream cheese, and orange juice in front of her body, as if he was about to feed her.

Usually at this point, Walter turned and left Rosalind to her own devices. She had always thought this was because Walter cared nothing for her. She found out that this was not the case.

Walter, bless his heart, knelt beside her bed and cried in that way that Neanderthals mourned: he howled like banshee.

Moved by his remorse, Rosalind stepped closer. She placed her hand on Walter's shoulder in an attempt to comfort him in his grief. Walter's head shot up and he looked around, wary, alert, and somehow knowing that she hovered nearby. Rosalind realized as she stood at Walter's side that Walter sensed her.

At Walter's wail, Monty arrived seconds later, agitated by the look of him, and then as Walter explained, a feral kind of fear appeared in Monty's eyes. The fear Rosalind saw in his furry face also surprised her. For a moment, she believed Monty might revert to his baser, more animalistic ways, but he held firm. As if realizing most of our preconceptions of gorillas, Monty's strong true heart prevailed over his much greater fear through a tremendous struggle of will.

It is amazing how pain seems to focus your attention. The body commands you, forces you to deal with the problem at hand. And to a lesser extent, that's what Rosalind's sensing of Walter's and Monty's pain did to her now.

The contingencies flowered before her like a morning glory awaking and they were catastrophic in their significance.

Then like a distant calling, Rosalind felt Hector's pain. Oh, my goodness, Hector was in for a monumental break down!

But the pain before her pulled Rosalind back to the moment, as again she sensed Walter, who worried about what happened to his home now. His main question was would he be able to continue to live here? Walter loved this old house, loved it with the passion one has for some integral part of his being, which it was, since Walter's genes were made here, his surrogate mother lived here, and Walter was born here. It was touching.

Monty, on the other hand, worried what happened to him. Monty's fears--and Rosalind had never considered Monty as anything but satisfied with his life--were of the most immediate variety and his logic--another surprise--was faultless. If only I could have solved the language barrier, Rosalind thought, only now realizing the greatness that lay in Monty. But she didn't fault Monty for her failures.

Rosalind marveled for a second at the success Monty had achieved; he had surpassed all her expectations. Walter was good at math and reading, since Neanderthal's have a brain larger than a human's but the great apes lack our propensity for cunning, or so Rosalind had believed, and Monty's almost childlike lack of guile, Rosalind had also believed, left him without the ability to follow the subtleties of planning. She was wrong on that point.

Monty's fear was a strange dichotomy. He hoped that maybe this would be his chance to return to his home in that far off jungle he was stolen from as a child, and yet, he worried that if the authorities--nebulous in his thoughts--discovered him, he wouldn't be deported back to Africa but placed in a more immediate and convenient place like the Nashville zoo.

That was his greater fear.

Rosalind now recalled the first time she had discussed the zoo with Monty. He was only a young gorilla then--back when he still called her Mama--and had somehow read a description of the zoo from some book he had pilfered from the library. He didn't realize for several years that Rosalind knew he was sneaking out books to read. She found Monty's thefts amusing, proud of him, and told him so when he realized she knew.

Later, he came to her, his huge shoulders slumped in remorse, begging for forgiveness in that way that gorillas asked for forgiveness, and when Monty asked for forgiveness, it broke Rosalind's heart. She could never punish him for anything.

He found her in the library and approached submissively; his eyes cast downwards, he laid his head in her lap. "I am a thief," he signed.

Rosalind just stroked his soft fur and told him, "Oh, Monty, you never disappoint me. You make me happy with everything you do."

"Then you won't send me to the zoo, Mama?" he signed.

And this hurt even more; that he thought she could do such a thing, but Rosalind said instead, "What do you know of zoos, Monty?"

"They are places where they keep animals in pens," he'd signed. "Like prisoners, held against their will."

All Rosalind could do was nod sadly and tell him, "Yes, like prisoners."

"But isn't this wrong?"

"In some peoples reasoning it's not." Apparently, Monty confused our penal system with zoos, and believed Rosalind might send him to one for stealing the books. But she never anticipated the turn the conversation would take.

"Then I am less than a thief," he signed.

It was at that moment that Monty realized that humans considered him lesser than other humans, although he believed, believed himself to be one of us. No heartbreak is as severe as the one that destroys your belief in a just world, and threatens to make you into something you are definitely not--an outsider.

"Monty, I would never send you to the zoo," Rosalind said and he'd left happy.

But the zoo held a special fear for Monty.

_The things I know now_ , Rosalind thought, shaking her head in remorse at these memories. Some of us might benefit from a short stay on this side of that barrier between life and death--they might appreciate a lot more the world they lived in now.

And as Rosalind stood beside Walter as he grieved, she could only be amazed at how blind, how callous she had been to those around her, those she loved but never understood in all the years of sharing her life with them, the secret fears in their hearts--and the resulting pain those fears caused. She understood now that we clung to those around us to help mitigate those fears, using that love to sooth the nightmares of living.

Rosalind had so much to atone for and so much to learn--and if not for that, she would have laughed at the irony--it took her death for her to understand what living meant.

Chapter 2

The Platypi Project

Rosalind roamed the halls for the three days before Hector arrived. Visiting and studying from a distance now, all of her experiments. Until then, she had never realized she had so many, and the reasons for them varied like the whims of her heart. Rosalind thought she lived alone here, and in her whimsy, she would work on different experiments as her moods and needs suited her. Most required time to develop and so to push back the boredom, she would start something else that she considered of benefit to the great cause of science.

Take the Platypi project, for instance. It had started out as a small test of ways to insert vocal abilities into an animal, which required a lot of chromosomal restructuring. Splicing into their DNA, via germ therapy, by cutting out the genes that induced their natural development in a certain direction and replacing those with the genes that induced vocal chords, isn't that simple. That was the thing with genetics; some genes affected others in ways impossible to predict until they were actually in development. That's why Rosalind chose the Platypus--a simple but similar DNA structure along the base pairs, and as a bonus, they laid eggs so she could hatch them away from the parents and work the ova in the shell.

But she never understood why until she realized now in death that she had started this experiment to help Monty to talk to her. Although too busy with all of her varied works, Rosalind somehow understood beyond knowing that she needed someone to talk to, someone to ease the loneliness in her heart. And Rosalind had elected Monty.

It was in these early days of her wandering through the mansion that Rosalind learned her first valuable lesson--dying is great for clarifying your vision; living, she had never realized that many of her ideas were so crackpot, which Rosalind now saw as a blessing. It was best you learned these things after life; it saved you from suffering through the embarrassment.

Over the next few days, Rosalind would fully realize a lot of things. She now had the time for self-reflection, and Walter and Monty were busy with other things.

Walter continued to maintain the house, while Monty attempted to contact Hector. That proved a difficult task but Monty succeeded--that is what is important.

After finally discovering a number for Hector, Monty called him. With one grunt, Monty let Hector know he needed him. And with only a few minutes of discourse between them, they devised an ingenious way of communicating; Monty logged onto the internet and texted Hector of her death. Thrilled for Monty's success, Rosalind still sensed Hector across the lines, the remorse he felt, the regrets.

But the scientist in her marveled at the simplicity of the solution. If Rosalind had given Monty a phone with texting capabilities--instead of signing to him as she'd always done--they might have understood each other so much better.

And, of course, as a scientist, Rosalind had to test the limits of her new world, which helped her to discover the range of her new "abilities," although, again, abilities might be the wrong word for this. She had new traits it seemed, as if on this side of the barrier, the world operated under different physics.

Rosalind could now float, glide, move through solid matter as if it were not there. The world had become insubstantial to her, or she to it. But she could affect nothing. No amount of will would make her solid enough to "touch" the world on the other side.

Rosalind could also feel the emotions of others, or so it seemed with Walter, Monty and Hector; sense their thoughts at times. She had always considered logic and emotion too different things--Rosalind soon found that they were more similar than different, although they seemed to be of different wavelengths. Emotions had an aura of orange, while thoughts were of a cooler nature, like lake blue, or violet. But they emanated from your brain and during the days she wandered the hallways, she began to understand that emotions were in fact just a different way a person learned.

Rosalind tested everything she could think to test, to understand this new reality she now inhabited, making few discoveries she hadn't already learned on the first day of her death.

On the day before Hector came home--and his homecoming was a complete surprise to Rosalind since she had not been informed of when he was arriving--she discovered that she could not travel past the grounds of the estate. Every time Rosalind reached the entrance gate to the grounds, something--that barrier again--refused her another step. No matter how much will she put into leaving, she was also tethered to this house. A harness around her body halted her from going forward, and yet, nothing stopped her from returning.

Rosalind would only come to accept her new reality about the day that Hector arrived to claim his possessions.

Chapter 3

The Easter Bunny

Hector's arrival excited Rosalind. Her boy finally came home. He hadn't been here in over twenty years. And though it had bothered her then, she knew this house caused Hector pain. How much pain she caused him wasn't quantifiable but it was intense. Rosalind sensed these thoughts more than saw anything physical; her new abilities didn't allow her to see whole pictures, so Rosalind didn't know how intense, until Hector started cataloguing and sorting through her work the day after her funeral.

This came home the afternoon Hector dealt with the rabbits. He came into the room, alone, and began studying her notes on these particular animals. Forty-one rabbits, all in individual cages, lined along the back wall. They looked innocent; the only difference between them and an ordinary rabbit was their two-inch fangs and the rattle snake rattles on their tails but Rosalind knew otherwise.

Hector sat there, studying the cages, reading her notes, biting his bottom lip in concentration, and trying to figure out a way to repair these animals, or to regress them. He was a physicist not a biologist, and learning as he went forward. And Hector did know they were dangerous; that was in Rosalind's notes.

In their own way, the rabbits were more dangerous than the Elm trees in the garden.

Soft-hearted, Hector couldn't bring himself to euthanize the rabbits. It went against his sense of fairness. Besides, he was looking at the rabbits but seeing this bunny his father had given him for their last Easter together. These bunnies were its ancestors, converted by Rosalind into a twisted memory of that original, again driven by her emotional wish fulfillment.

Hector's reliving of these memories, remembering the bunny snuggled up to him, soft and warm, with a smell that he found pleasant were what mainly drove his decision to not harm the innocent animals, as he saw them. He smelled that smell now. That's what he remembered most about the bunny--its smell.

He stood up and walked toward the cages, his eyes seeing another time. He laid his hand on the cage latch. The rabbit turned to face him and only responded by rattling its tail.

For a moment, as Rosalind watched, she believed Hector wanted to open the cage. And he did; she saw it as a slight urge in him.

_Don't,_ Rosalind thought to him. _Don't do this, Hector, you fool-hearted bo_ y! Her inability to affect the world frustrated her.

What frightened Rosalind was that that one memory triggered such self-loathing in him. And with the rabbits, whose bites were deadly, he could kill himself just by accident. And Rosalind doubted if it would be an accident.

_Don't do this, Hector. Don't my son._ Upset, no amount of her will could stop him.

After a few moments, the rabbit sprang at the cage door, slamming into it, baring its long teeth and glaring at him with evil in its eyes. Besides the Elms, these rabbits were Rosalind's greatest failure. The two opposing instincts of the animals she had spliced together--the snakes to attack and the rabbits to flee--had driven all of them stark raving mad.

She could stand no more of it. Such pain, self-loathing in her son, forced her own pain to swell up in her and Rosalind broke into tears, crying in a long moan, ghost-like in its eeriness.

_Oh, my poor Hector, if I'd only known_ , she thought past her misery.

All she desired now was to grab her son and hold onto to him for dear life. Tell him that it wasn't his fault that Javier didn't return. Rosalind was supposed to be his salvation and he hers, instead, in their grief they both sank.

Chapter4

The Somethingness in Nothingness

Kris and Chrissy Wildermuss were arguing about nothing, which they did often. It was a playful kind of arguing, more like intellectual sparring, really.

"Nothing is something," Chrissy said. She turned onto the road that led away from home.

"No, it's not. How can you have nothing and it be something?" Kris said. Chrissy had been trying to recover the upper hand in their arguments since last Tuesday, when Kris, who prided himself on this, had won their last argument on the correct pronunciation of "vice" in the phrase vice versa. Kris maintained that you could also pronounce it vice (with a long "i" and a short "a" as in at the end of Pisa) versa, whereas Chrissy said you pronounced it only vice (as in Vice president) versa.

"It's not so much the thing as the idea. With nothing, it's like something without anything."

Kris gave her a puzzled look and said, "You know that makes no sense at all." He laughed, his dark eyes bright with pleasure.

"Yes, it does. Take zero, which is nothing. Without it, we'd have no place holder after one through nine. Nothing is something in this case," she said, grinning at her cleverness. Chrissy was a teacher and she liked these arguments simply because they made her think.

Kris kept the frown on his dark-tanned face. "Okay, maybe in that case. But it's still _no_ _thing."_

"Oops!" Chrissy said as her white SUV bumped the car in front of her. She had thought the man was pulling out from the stop sign but at the last second, he stopped for some reason. Chrissy was looking down the road for oncoming cars, unaware of this. _It wasn't even a bump,_ she thought, _a tap, really_.

Both Wildermusses got out of the car, still good-naturedly arguing about nothing.

"It fills a philosophical space and that makes it something," Chrissy said, searching through her purse for her insurance card--if she needed it.

They walked up to the old car ahead of them, an apology already forming on Chrissy's lips. She looked dubiously down at the bumper of the other car, a brown Taurus. They hadn't even swapped paint, just smeared plastic from her bumper to his.

The other driver got out--an older man in his late forties maybe, with a Van Dyke beard and graying ring of hair around his bald head.

As the Wildermusses neared, the trunk popped open.

"Oh, my!" Chrissy exclaimed.

"Oh, no!" Kris echoed her--the animal in the trunk looked like a gorilla.

"Is that?" Chrissy asked.

For a moment the group exchanged glances as the seriousness of the situation sunk in for everyone. Chrissy glanced at Kris, Kris glanced at the man, the man glanced at the ape and the ape glanced up from his I-phone, where he'd been playing a video game.

"An I-phone?" Chrissy said, trying to process the entire scene, not at all sure of what she was seeing. "Is this some joke?" When confronted with the unbelievable, she tended to think someone was pulling a prank.

The man, fearful of losing what was in the trunk, hastily made his plan.

"What's going on here," Kris said to the man, stepping in front of his wife.

"Oh, this?" the man said, indicating with a sweep of his hand, the trunk and the ape inside it. "This is nothing, really. Nothing at all."

"Nothing, my boots!" Chrissy said. She stared at the gorilla. "That's an endangered species!"

"Monty," the man ordered, "take them!"

The gorilla never hesitated. As quick as a snap, he leapt from the trunk, seized both man and woman, one under each huge arm.

Chrissy let out a small squeal of surprise. She struggled to free herself; her brown hair whipping around her head. She struggled so hard her shoe fell off as Kris groaned from the strain of trying to break the ape's powerful grip and breathe at the same time.

The gorilla grinned, as far as such beasts can grin. He deposited the man and woman into the trunk. He knew what this meant--Hector had to let him ride in the back seat! He loved riding in the car.

Rueful, the man slammed the trunk shut; still unsure of what he needed to do. He knew he needed to get his car back to the mansion. He'd inherited the Taurus from his mother, who tended to ignore its maintenance and the man feared the old car might not make it home. It had a transmission leak and at this critical juncture, he could not afford a break down.

He jumped into the driver's seat and jerked the car into gear. In the backseat, Monty buckled up.

The man drove away making plans in his head. Nervous, he'd never before done anything like this, so his mind whorled with contingencies and what-ifs.

When he glanced into the rearview mirror, he found Monty already sound asleep in the back. That's what riding in the car did for the young silverback gorilla. It put him right to sleep. But he might also be faking it--to avoid Hector's ire.

Monty's actions put him in jeopardy and Hector knew why Monty had done what he did. The last two times he had visited the store where he bought his supplies, Monty had tagged along so he could sneak into the library across the street since he knew what days the library was closed.

Doctor Hector Proctor drove away, wondering what he was going to do with his two hapless victims, very worried indeed.

Chapter 5

Bad for Good

"Where are they? They should've been back from the store by now," Bell said to her sister who had just walked out of the bathroom combing her long blond hair.

"I don't know? Maybe they got caught up in something?" Lyse said, thinking maybe a traffic jam had held up their parents. A fast-pitch softball player, Lyse saw enough wrecks when on the road playing travel ball to know they happened often. Lyse was a slim girl, unlike Bell, who looked more athletic than her sister.

"Like what?" the darker-haired Bell asked.

"Like a traffic jam."

Bell looked as if that thought hadn't occurred to her. "Oh, yeah, that could happen." For a second, Bell felt kind of dumb and she was considered the smarter of the two.

"Why don't you find out? You have that little GPS trick you can do on their phones."

Reasserting her mental dominance, Bell said more practically. "Why don't I just call them?"

"Well, you could do that too," Lyse said and continued to comb her hair.

Bell dialed the number and after several attempts without reaching them, she began to get a little worried. It wasn't like them to not pick up their phones. One of them, at least. Kris sometimes forgot to turn on his, once he turned it off, but her Mom never did this. She was a maniac about everyone keeping their phones on, admonishing the girls when they turned theirs off. So, her Mom should have picked up. _Parents are so irresponsible sometimes,_ she thought.

As the two girls were talking, Ben walked in with a dog leash in his hand. "Bitty ran off again," the stout, brown-haired boy declared. He wasn't too worried about it. Bitty ran off all the time. Possessing a deceptive ability to slip her collar almost at will, she'd be back by dinner.

"Mom and Dad are missing," Lyse said.

"Maybe they went for ice cream?" Ben said, out of the blue it seemed.

Both of his step-sisters looked at him with strange frowns on their faces.

"Why would they go for ice cream, Ben?" Bell said.

He shrugged. "I don't know, but they've been sneaking off and getting ice cream here lately."

"How do you know that," Bell asked. Being here only every other weekend, Ben tended to notice things that were right under the other kids noses. Bell always assumed that when Ben came from his other mother's house, he walked into theirs with fresh eyes, and these changes stuck out and were therefore, more noticeable to him.

"I know--"Ben said, an impish light appearing in his eyes. Ben didn't remember when everyone started calling Bell, Bell. It started when Ben was just learning to talk and he started calling her Sissy Bell because he couldn't say Sibelina--a name she hated--and from Sissy Bell it mutated into Sis Bell, and finally everyone settled on Bell. And she had been Bell ever since.

"Cause I heard them talking about it the other day, Sibelina."

Bell frowned and said to Lyse. "Well, I guess, I could try--you know? But you better not tell Mama and them about it," she warned Lyse.

"Now, why would I tell Mama you're a criminal hacker?"

"Look! Sometimes you can do bad for good," Bell said.

"Yeah!" Ben added.

"Stay out of this," Lyse said.

"Not if we're gonna do bad for good. That makes us super heroes--or activists."

Reluctantly, and to get out of the middle of the argument forming between Lyse and Ben, Bell ran into her room and retrieved her laptop. She typed, tapped with her finger for several minutes, triangulating the position of her mother's and father's cell phones by the pings off of the cell towers in the area. A friend of hers who was an excellent hacker had taught her this trick.

"I found them!" Bell said, looking up at them in glee. She wasn't a criminal hacker, but she enjoyed the act of it. _This could become addictive,_ she thought.

"Great! Let's go!" Lyse said. Ever since she'd gotten her learner's permit, she looked for any excuse to drive.

"They're not far, just down the road," Bell told Lyse.

"Maybe they broke down?" Ben said.

"Carson!" Lyse yelled. "We need to go see if Mom and Dad need help."

The youngest of the children, when he ran into the room Bell said to Carson, "Come on. We're going on an adventure!" She didn't realize how right she was.

Chapter 6

When Is a Bloodhound Not a Bloodhound?

Lyse parked her used, blue Chevy Cobalt behind their parent's white SUV.

The car sat abandoned beside the road. Both doors stood wide open, like ears. Looking at it, all of the children got a deep sense of wrongness from the scene.

The flashers on the car were still flashing and they could hear it clicking inside the car. Birds tweeted in the warm sunny, spring day, insects flew around them, and far off a lawn mower was running and yet things seemed too quiet.

The kids slowly climbed out of the Cobalt and encircled the SUV, examining it.

Bell squatted down in front of it, her hand on the hood. "See here ya'll. There's a smudge on the front bumper."

"Maybe they had a wreck?" Lyse said. She felt weird seeing the car like this. This was something more than a wreck.

"Looks like it," Bell said. When she checked, their parent's phones were in the car.

"Hey! There are tire tracks up here!" Ben said, bent over, his hands on his knees as he studied them.

Bell walked up and spread her arms, measuring something. She said, "Those are from the factory. I think a 2004 Ford Taurus."

Lyse asked, incredulous, "How would you know that?"

"I read a book on it once."

Turning around, looking at the stretch of roadway, whose nearest house was far down the road made Lyse worry now. "It's like they vanished into thin air," she said. This kept getting weirder and weirder.

"Here's Mama's shoe," Carson said, holding up one of his mother's sneakers. He'd found it on the shoulder. "She would never leave her shoe," Carson said practically.

"We know, Carson," Lyse said absentmindedly; her thoughts were on graver issues.

"She loved that shoe," Carson said.

"We know," Ben said, annoyed.

"It was easy on her corns," Carson said.

"We know!" all of them said in unison.

Excitement in her voice, Bell said, "Look here! There's an oil leak on the ground." A small puddle of oil--or it looked like oil to Bell--was situated right between the tire tracks. "That probably came from the car they hit. Why isn't it here?"

Lyse and Ben shrugged.

"Ya'll don't think somebody took them," Ben said, worried now too.

Carson, still holding the shoe, said, "What do we do now?"

As a unit, the other three kids looked at Bell; she seemed to have all the answers.

She shrugged. "I don't know? Maybe we can follow the oil drips?"

Bell walked over to the spot of oil, squatted down and dabbed her finger in it. She rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. "It's not oil. It's transmission fluid." She put it to her nose and sniffed. "It smells a little burnt. Maybe over used?"

A second later, Bell's face lit up as an idea took form.

"How do you know that's transmission fluid," Ben asked.

"You can tell by the viscosity and the color. I read about it in a book once."

She turned to Carson and asked. "Can you smell this from over there?" He must've been ten feet away from her.

"Yeah, it's kinda gunfy-smelling."

"What does gunfy mean, Carson?" Ben asked.

"You know? Goofy and funny at the same time."

"Oh, okay."

"But you can smell it," Bell went on.

Carson nodded.

"Okay," Bell said to all of them. "I propose we follow the drips. And we're gonna use Carson as a blood hound." Even as she said it, Bell realized how crazy that sounded.

"That's crazy, Bell. Carson can't track a car," Lyse said. Bell was beginning to let those books go to her head. She was getting too big for her brain.

"No, listen to me. Carson has the ability to smell stuff really well. He can smell nasty aps from a mile off." Nasty aps was a contentious food in their house; their Dad always ate them and their Mama always hated them.

No one else in the family liked the nasty aps, but Kris and Carson, which were a combination of apples and soy sauce, but Carson and their Dad loved them.

"Carson always knows when Kris is eating some, member that day he came in out of the backyard and asked for some of them, just by the smell. We can turn Carson into our bloodhound. He just has to stick his head out the window of the car and we'll drive slow."

"We can't turn Carson into a bloodhound," Lyse said, remaining skeptical.

"Listen to me. He can smell nasty aps every time Dad brings them into the house. He knows it's there, just by the smell. So, we know he has a great sense of smell. All we need to do is redirect his focus."

"Getting what Bell meant," Ben said. "To the transmission stuff."

"Exactly!" Bell cried.

Lyse said, "Come on! He's not some dog. It might take days to train him to do that."

Bell stooped down and started scooping up the transmission fluid. "Bring me a plastic bag," she told Ben, who ran off to find one.

He came back a second later with a small potato chip bag he found under Lyse's seat.

"We just need to blindfold him, let him get a good whiff of this, and then stick his head out the window. With the blindfold, he won't be distracted by his other senses. This will work."

"I can do it!" Carson said with confidence.

"What do you know, you're only nine," Lyse said.

"I can do it," Carson said again, not realizing how hard it might be, but then he was new to heroing.

Five minutes later, his head stuck out of the window of the Cobalt, Carson cried, "I'm doing it!"

The moved down the road, outrunning snails but only barely, following the unerring sense of smell of their brother.

"There!" Carson would say every minute or so, and where he pointed lay a drop of fluid.

In the front seat, Bell thought, _I can't believe this worked._

They followed Carson's nose down the road, driving as slowly as possible. When a car appeared, Lyse pulled over. Finally, thirty minutes later, they began ascending a hillside until they were stopped by a black, wrought-iron gate. About a half mile down the blocked driveway, high upon the hill sat a mansion.

They got out of the car and stood looking up at it; the mansion was half obscured by trees and looked to be centuries old. As they looked, everyone was thinking: _That is one creepy-looking place_.

A second later, they all thought: _I don't want to go in there at all_.

Lyse looked up at the mansion, looming on the hill and shivered. It gave her a strange, ominous chill. _I hope it ain't haunted,_ she thought.

"That place is huge!" Ben said. "I hope it's haunted."

Chapter 7

Pushing Buttons

Houses, like people can be filled with love. They can be filled with furniture from days past and the moldy, ancient work of others will take over its atmosphere but it may never be a home. It may be filled with the most modern chairs, tables, shiny chrome and glass, pointing to a future that may never arrive. It may be filled with down comforters, knitted doilies, and warm, bright prints no older than yesterday, and yet, none of these make it a home. What matters is that these things are loved by those inside the house. It is love's transmutational power that changes a house into a home.

_To me, this house is my home. And I filled it with the things I love--my life's work._ From Rosalind Proctor's Journal.

The house haunted Doctor Hector Proctor through his memories of it. He'd inherited all of this: the hundred or so rooms, the winding staircases, the animals and all of the experiments that filled it. But it needed a lot of work and Hector had no time to fix it up. Only a few of the back bedrooms and maybe a toilet on each floor worked as it should.

The only thing his mother had kept up to date was the security system. It was first-rate in his opinion, though neglected like everything in the mansion. Hector had still to learn all of its functions. There were just too many buttons to learn it quickly.

He sat moodily in front of the dull, stainless-steel console now, trying to figure out his next move. He regretted now abducting the couple, but his fright for himself and Monty overwhelming, Hector had reacted. Now he was in this mess, when all he wanted to do was work on his mother's experiments.

Well, if he was being honest, he really wanted to be out dating. Hector felt burdened with loneliness, especially now that he had no one but the memory of his mother.

Hector had once tried to date, had went to one of those dating sites, and what had he put down for his musical tastes? Songs about animals--which he felt was a stupid answer. But it was true; with Monty and Walter--though technically not an animal, Walter, with all that hair, always gave Hector the impression he was more animal than human--as his only friends growing up, Hector felt closer to animals than humans. It was the only thing he could think of--women made him nervous and animal songs eased that nervousness. They reminded him of home--not the home he had, but the one he idealized. He had no hobbies, no friends, but "Joy to the World," or "What the Fox Says," made him happy. He loved just about every animal song he'd ever heard, and any song about dogs. "Feed Jake" could nearly bring him to tears.

Maybe I should get a dog from downstairs, he thought but rejected it. It would probably bite him.

Needless to say, most of the women he met on line didn't like him. That's what he wanted to be doing anyway.

But he was here instead.

And still not letting go of that remorse, Hector thought, _how could they like me_? He was an over forty, slightly-balding doctor with no social skills. Who would like him?

When he was at the corporation, Hector had always felt rejected. They made fun of him on a constant basis. And Hector absolutely loathed it when they paged him. "Calling Doctor Proctor. Calling Doctor Proctor." He'd told the receptionist to say Mr. Proctor but one of the guys in development had paid her off and though she said she would stop, she never had.

He hated to think about the corporation. Right before his greatest triumph, he'd been canned. The funding pulled, and of course, they let him go. He'd been on the verge of moving back home, since he was flat broke, when his mother died.

He wondered what she had been like, since he hadn't been home in twenty years. Had she been lonely? No, she had kept busy, considering her experiments numbered over fifty. And he understood none of them.

Case in point was the talking Platypuses. He didn't even understand why his mother had done that, much less how. The only thing he was sure of right now was that his mother wanted to increase Monty's intelligence tenfold. That was the first thing he found in her notes. Hector believed that Monty now had the IQ of an ordinary teenager, and sometimes he acted as moody and irrational as one. That was something else the doctor hated about people. They were always irrational.

Hector pushed a button for a particular camera, watched the third-level hallway appear. _Maybe that's why I'm keeping up the security system,_ he thought, _I want to keep the irrational outside?_

With these myriad thoughts flitting through his mind, Hector stared at the security system, completely lost by it. He carefully pushed a button, and noting the lights that lit up with their appropriate tags, hoping he didn't push the wrong one. That one was door 15. With door 16, when he pushed the button, the light didn't come on. That was another thing. This console needed to be updated. And he hadn't even gotten into the ones marked cages and cells. He had no idea what those opened. And he surely didn't want to unlock the wrong door.

Chapter 8

The Hounds of Memory

Rosalind had spent days following her son before he picked up the couple, driven by her desire to save him from the hounds of his memory. There was not much else she could do.

That Hector never knew his father--or only briefly--always bothered her. For a boy, to know your father is important; it gives him a foundation to build upon. A boy might not grow up to be what his father wants him to be but he will grow up with knowledge of how a man acts. He will understand that most elusive of traits: the bond between father and son. For how else does he cope when the world around him says differently? Fathers belong with mothers; that's how the world works to the simple reasoning of a ten-year-old boy and otherwise only causes him distress.

And Hector's distress has always been a part of Rosalind's grief too. Javier was a bright, witty man, though goofy-acting around his son. Since Javier's father was Scottish and his mother Puerto Rican, Javier always joked that he was a Scott O'rican. And he could affect the most varied and funny of accents. He would do Sean Connery from that movie about the field biologist in the Amazon and her and Hector would fall apart laughing at him.

"Don't you tell me how to foul up," he'd say with most seriousness and Sean Connery's voice issuing from a short, dark man like Javier seemed too unreal to not be hilarious.

Like that movie, Javier was a field biologist, searching in the Amazon for possible cures to diseases, a noble endeavor. He'd died from an infection while he was hot on the trial of a source for a cure--as he said in one his letters--"for just about everything!" It seemed the cure for everything found him instead.

In his last letter Javier told them he would be home in two weeks. And foolishly, Rosalind told Hector.

Rosalind regretted now the lie she told Hector to shield him from the truth. Such a small lie to tell a boy, but when the reality had seemed so much more devastating--that the man he looked up to was dead--it had felt harmless. Rosalind didn't know how do to deal with grief like that--for a ten-year-old boy, she imagined it devastating. She could not tell a small boy his father was never coming home, Rosalind reasoned in those first agonizing days after Javier's death. She finally decided that you didn't. Tell him when he's older, when he's ready for it, she quibbled.

"Your father has left us." Just these words, no lie really, Rosalind had thought at the time. He had left them.

But when the chain of events unfolded, it left her, now at the end of her life, with this wretched mess of a man who had lost the will or ability to be intimate with anyone, who identified more with an ape than a human being. But then, Monty did watch over him much more than his own mother did. That Monty might have been Hector's only role model, he could only be led astray, for what does an ape know of the ways of men?

She guessed it's true what they say: One lie is a thousand untruths waiting to happen. And now, here she was, a thousand untruths later.

Rosalind, on the other hand, dealt with her grief in a completely different fashion; She turned inwards, made it fuel for her curiosity. Rosalind buried herself in work that she thought would help mankind, lofty ideas that consumed her; Rosalind just kept getting deeper and deeper into her work. If you just keep going, she told herself, you will outrun this crushing grief, and it won't find you. The funny thing about grief is that you can never outrun it. It lurks in the recesses of your heart and haunts you like the most determined of ghosts.

You push on--that's what her mother taught her. Go through the grief, hoping to find light on the other side of that emotional darkness.

And the days turn, and one day you look up and years have gone by; and all you remember is that you were working--not what you accomplished, just the work before you--hiding in it from the grief.

Rosalind didn't really look up until Hector graduated Salutatorian of his class, about eight years later.

And then like a whale surfacing on the ocean, it was only briefly. She came up and breathed the air for Hector's graduation and then submerged again. Rosalind found the air above stifling, overbearing; the way the intense heat of the desert oppresses with its all-pervasive existence. Down below, in the mansion lay the coolness of work, while up above, in the light of day, lay oppressiveness and reality.

Again she failed Hector. It was at that point, after years of dealing with his life alone, fumbling through the rigorous social landscape of high school, ill-equipped, bumbling even, that he finally gave up. Rosalind sensed that now.

The only hope Hector had left was the shiny horizon of college, of learning. He looked forward to it but once there, Rosalind also saw now, that he fared no better. He went to his father's Alma Mater and the fraternity rejected their first legacy student ever. A part of the college experience is socializing and again, Hector lacked the skills she should have taught him as a small boy. Life compounds problems when you don't deal with them from the beginning. It only sets you up to fail again and again.

But we make our lives from the moments we inherit, and sometimes, our pedigree doesn't equip us with the best of all possible means of living. Therefore, we must create them inadequately from the start.

That is how the small deceits in our lives grow large, until they loom above us like unconquerable giants. One small lie planted when Hector was young, grew beyond her and Hector's ability to deal with it.

Chapter 9

Wounds

Rosalind knew now there was no salvation for her. The irretrievable moments of her days were spent, never to be reclaimed. She could not mend the wounds that had long ago healed into ugly scars. Scars that now acted as reminders of her foolish ways, that if embellished upon her body, would be a mass of welted memories. So, what could she do for her son now?

As he always had, Hector followed the same, safe routine that worked for him at the corporation--a place that was nothing more than a grown-up version of high school with its stars and pecking order--when he had worked there. A simple routine that served him well: keep your head down and do the science.

Rosalind wondered why he never saw his own accomplishments as well as she did now--blind perhaps? Or blinded by his internal examination of his faults? He started out a boy not good enough for his father; uncorrected, he carried that world view into adulthood.

He did that a lot, she saw now. He constantly reviewed the past as if he could somehow change it. Hector spent much of his day in internal monologue, berating himself; he thought of replies to things said twenty years ago, solved disputes from ten, wondered what would have happened had he done this instead of that, and reviewed actions that ended up wrong so long ago. It was almost a neurosis by now.

Rosalind believed it was his neurosis that caused Hector to act the way he did with the two adults he abducted. With Monty's help, he dragged them into the house and tossed them into the old cage Rosalind had purchased for getting Monty a companion (Another foolish action.) when Monty went through puberty and became unruly for a few years. Rosalind knew now that Monty didn't have a problem, wasn't a problem; he just had to live through it.

But Hector, in a fit of panic, tossed the couple in the cage and then went away to ponder what he should do next.

When Rosalind visited them, she felt a kinship to the couple, as if thirty years ago it was her and Javier all over again. The handsome, dark-haired man and the light-haired pretty woman. Rosalind wondered if Hector saw this similarity. And would that change his attitude towards them. She knew fear drove him at this moment but fear lessens over time. Familiarity also breeds understanding. That we get to know the thing before us, unveils its unknown qualities, lessons its mystery, and makes it not so fearful. We fear the unknown because we associate it with the dark, but it is amazing how much truth the dark illuminates when placed against the light of understanding.

Rosalind watched the couple, loving with each and for a moment missed Javier, the only man she ever loved. And now, would ever love.

For a moment, she saw that the only way to help the couple was to help her son.

Rosalind realized that Hector was a man besieged by an irreclaimable past and that he sought what everyone sought in this life. And there in that morass, Rosalind Proctor found her light.

Chapter 10

Who Let the Dogs Out?

Later, near sunset, the children stared up at the mansion again like it was a mountain they had to climb. From the looks of it, it was too.

"Are you sure they're in there?" Lyse asked.

"As sure as I can be," Bell said.

"See those poles over yonder," Ben said. "Those are security cameras. Whoever is inside is gonna know we're here." He recognized them from Grand Theft Auto.

"Maybe we should send Carson? He makes friends really easy," Bell said.

"Do you think those people are gonna be our friends?" Lyse said. Mama would kill her if she let Carson get hurt.

"Well, no."

"I can do it," Carson said.

"No," Lyse hissed. "You're too little."

"Don't matter. I can still do it," Carson's heart was bigger than his body.

"I think I should be the one that goes up and knocks," Ben said. He didn't want to but he would do it to save his Dad ... and his step Mom.

"Why you?"

"Because I have the knack to get us through the front door. Well, me anyway. You two--I have my doubts about."

"You can't lie," Bell said.

"Sometimes, Bell, you don't have to lie. You just need to mold the truth to fit your needs."

"You mean lie."

No--social engineering. I'll just be looking for Bitty." He grinned haughtily at her.

At Ben's knock, the front door of the mansion was opened by a small person. When Ben saw him, he did a double take. A man maybe? He was only a little bigger than Carson, and as hairy as a Yeti.

"He's a diminutive man," Bell whispered from their position in the bushes.

"Does that mean ugly?" Lyse asked.

"No, it means small."

"Then say small. Do you have any large words for ugly? Cause he's that if anything." Lyse shivered. He was very hairy. "He's like an Ewok on Rogaine," Lyse whispered.

"What's an Ewok?"

"Haven't you seen any of the Star Wars movies?" Lyse said.

"No, I read about them though."

Carson shrugged at this whole conversation. He was still into the Shadow Warriors video game.

"I've lost my dog, have you seen him?" Ben said to the man.

The diminutive man, said, "Awk, awk, awk, awk?" When he spoke, he revealed huge teeth. The man a large nose too, but you could easily miss his ears--they looked like mouse ears.

"Okay," Ben said. He turned and walked away, but when he reached the bushes the others hid behind, from a few feet away, Carson whispered, "Go back. He said, 'we have an assortment. Please come inside.'"

The man remained standing in the doorway, staring out into the cooling day as night progressed, waiting on Ben.

Ben turned and followed the hairy man down a hallway with flowery wallpaper halfway down the wall and oak paneling to the floor.

As soon as they disappeared, the two girls and Carson dashed into the house and down a hallway opposite of the way Ben and the man went.

Ben and the man walked until they reached a door. When the man opened it, it was full of stray dogs.

"Uh, thanks, this might take a while."

"Awk," the man said and walked away.

Lyse, Bell and Carson cautiously walked up the oak-paneled hallway, looking around at the paintings on the walls. Behind them, distantly they heard the frantic barking of dogs.

Two minutes later, Ben came trotting up.

"How did--?" Bell asked.

"I let the dogs out. Whoop, whoop! Who let the dogs out? I let the dogs out, whoop, whoop. Who let the dogs out--"

"Cut it out," Lyse hissed.

"He'll be busy for a while rounding up those crazy things. But he sure is fast for a little guy."

"Come on," Lyse said. "We don't have much time for Rapper MC Ron here."

"Who?" Ben said and then added with another dance around the hallway. "Let the dogs out. Whoop, whoop."

Chapter 11

Doctor Hector Proctor

Doctor Proctor saw the kids on the video monitor. He happened to be checking the cameras--still trying to figure them out in his paranoia--when they appeared on one of the screens.

Oh, no! They were heading into the hall where he had set up his Universe machine.

He got on his cell phone and texted Monty. "Get those kids out of there! Any way you can!"

Just before he'd left the corporation, Hector had taken the one thing that he believed belonged to him: The plans for his universe machine, a device based on string theory that he was using to test the possibility of bubble universes. Last weekend, he'd installed it in the west wing of the house, and in the process, had disabled all the locks on the six rooms he'd installed it in. Hector knew his device worked but testing it was another thing. As a beta version, the doctor hadn't worked out all of its kinks yet. It was extremely dangerous and those kids were walking smack dab into the middle of it. No telling where they might end up.

As they walked cautiously down the hallway, Bell said, "Check these doors."

They fanned out, turning doorknobs as they went. None were unlocked.

"We need a better plan," Lyse said.

"Yeah," Bell said. "This place is like the Winchester mansion."

"And what is that?" Lyse asked.

"A mansion this crazy woman made that had all these strange and confusing hallways and doors that went nowhere."

"Well, this is the place," Lyse said, dolefully. They were never gonna find Mom and Dad.

"Will you two be quiet? We don't want them to know we're here."

"Shush yourself," Lyse said to Ben.

"Booger head," Ben said.

"Booger face," Lyse said.

"Booger brains."

"Booger eater."

"Booger girl!" Ben said.

"Booger breath!" Lyse said.

"Bigger booger!"

"Booger sugar!"

Ben said, laughing at the idea. "You cain't give sugar to a booger."

"You can if it's you," Lyse said and started laughing with him.

Bell added as she turned a doorknob, "Did you know that the New England Journal of Medicine said that boogers might actually serve an immune function?"

"No," Lyse said. "And we don't care to know. It's a booger, Bell."

Before Bell could reply, Lyse shushed her. "I think I hear something?"

"I think I see something," Ben said, pointing behind them, the way they'd just came.

"It's an orangutan," Lyse said.

"No, it's not. It's a gorilla! Run!" Bell yelled.

Lyse grabbed Carson's hand--she wasn't gonna lose him.

They rushed down the hall, all but ignoring the doors.

"Hey!" Ben yelled. "This way!" He'd found an unlocked door.

Unfortunately, it was the one door, they shouldn't take--it led right into the heart of the doctor's universe machine.

If you were to take a look down the hallway, standing right at the head of it, you would have seen this: Six doors up on the left, Bell walked out and into the door across the hallway. Ben walked out right after her, but he came from the other direction. The gorilla, Monty, walked out six doors up, right behind Ben and crossed the hall, still looking for the kids. They never met each other.

Lyse walked out of the fifth door on the right and then turned around and went back inside the door she'd just come out of--it had a mirror in it and she wanted to check her hair. Carson, looking behind him, backed out of the first door up on the left and ran across the hall to the sixth door. Logic said that Bell and Carson were in the same room, and Ben and Monty were too, but they weren't.

Seconds later, Monty came out of the first door on the left side of the hallway and went into the second door on the same side. Ben walked out of the same door Monty walked into and they never met.

Bell came out of the fifth door on the left and ran down the hallway from the direction they'd just come from. She then ran off into another section of the house.

Ben came out of the third door on the left side of the hallway, looking behind him because he heard something. Monty came out of the third door across from Ben, looking behind himself too. He thought he heard Ben. They slowly backed up and bumped into each other.

In shock, Ben jumped around and spied Monty. "Yikes!" he yelped and ran back into the door. Frightened too, Monty went "Ahk!" * And ran back inside too.

*Translation of Monty's yelp. "Yikes!"

Lyse was looking for Carson when she walked into the room. An old woman stood near the back wall. She had gray hair, a little frizzled looking. _She really should condition that,_ Lyse thought. The woman wore a long, flowing night gown. _Wonder who she is?_

The woman turned, and though she spoke, Lyse could hear nothing she was saying. She squinted her eyes, since she needed glasses but didn't want to admit it yet, trying to discern what the woman was mouthing. Something about finding a Hector? Maybe. The woman took a step towards her and Lyse took a step back. Still watching the woman, Lyse thought she said, "My name is Rosalind." But she wasn't sure of that either. The woman took another step.

_Is this a ghost?_ Lyse thought.

Frightened, Lyse turned and ran out of the room. She believed she had seen a ghost.

Lyse ran out of the sixth door in the hallway and Carson, already in the hallway yelled, "Lyse!" at the top of his voice.

He ran to her and slammed into her with a fierce hug, causing her phone to slip from her pocket. Not realizing she'd lost her phone, Lyse grabbed Carson's hand and ran up the stairs at the end of the hallway. "We're getting out of this crazy place," she said.

Ben was last to make it out of the rooms. He slowly opened the door and walked out into the hallway. On the ground, he noticed the phone. Ben walked up the hallway, still searching for the gorilla, as he bent down to pick up the phone. He believed it belonged to Lyse but he wasn't sure.

The gorilla came out at the end of the hallway. Ben saw him and stopped.

The gorilla turned and said, "Ahk, ahk, ahk!" *

*Translation of Monty's words, "Hey, kid, stop right there!"

Monty shuffled down the hall and Ben started to run but tripped. Before he could get up, the gorilla had him in his powerful grip.

"Let me go! Let me go!" Ben yelled, struggling to no avail.

The gorilla carried him down the corridor over his shoulder. At the corner, the beast rushed down the next hallway towards the seldom-used sections of the mansion.

At a door with a map of Africa on it, the gorilla grabbed the knob and turned it. Surprisingly, it was unlocked.

He went inside with the still struggling boy, who now thought he was about to be gorilla food, although he had no idea what gorillas ate.

Chapter 12

Finding a Way

Rosalind had conducted some experiments on what exactly she was capable of doing in her present situation. Not much, unless the one time she "touched" Walter was significant. As if a muscle she had to work, to make stronger, after days of trying, Rosalind could move small objects a centimeter or two. If she concentrated hard enough, she could lift the edge of a piece of paper, push a pencil and it was on these two items that she focused her efforts.

Hector spent a lot of time in Rosalind's office, trying to decipher her notes and understand her work. As a physicist, he had to do a lot of homework.

As a result of that, Rosalind spent whole days sitting beside him, and in her boredom (It required a lot of reading for Hector.) she would casually try to lift a piece of paper or push a pencil, until one fortuitous day, finally resulted in her nudging the pencil on the desk.

Ecstatic, Rosalind pursued that small task. Being dead, she didn't get exhausted, or hungry, or feel any of the needs a body forced you to deal with, so she could push herself much harder than you could possibly push a sixty-year old body. And by the end of the second week, Rosalind was now able to push the pencil with some skill; She could make the tip end of her index finger solid.

With few more days of practice, Rosalind could lift a pencil and write with it, although her handwriting looked like scribble. And she did, writing several entries into her journal with it but only a few since lifting the pencil affected her.

Rosalind wouldn't call what she felt as effort but as she worked, there came a time when her control over these things waned. She felt no weakening of her system--if, indeed, she had a system--but over time, Rosalind just grew ... sloppy. Moving her will against the pencil or paper seemed to loosen her control over her "self," as if she excited those helium atoms that constituted her "body" now and they over expanded until whatever solidity Rosalind possessed became too spread out for her to "touch" the pencil.

At those times, she would wander away, sliding through walls, and up and down stairways, through the house, thinking about Hector and other things. After their arrival, sometimes she would visit the couple, still trying to figure out how to help them. Wanting desperately to contact Hector and tell him to stop this foolishness.

It was on one of these walks that she found the children.

There were four of them, two older girls, blond and black haired, and two younger boys, brown and black haired.

Sound didn't reach Rosalind so she didn't "hear" them as they talked, only half-read their lips and attitudes. When you deal with animals, you learn to read the subtle, nonverbal clues they exhibit and this skill helped Rosalind to read the children's lips.

They squabbled like a peck of chickens over a grub. Rebellious and annoying to each other, she still discerned a degree of love for each other. They just hadn't learned how to yet.

The oldest, the blonde, was a skinny thing, needed to eat more or run less, Rosalind didn't know which. The second oldest was a light-complexioned, dark-haired girl who seemed to be a know-it-all that, in fact, did seem to know it all. Rosalind would have to watch her. The smallest boy seemed okay, but the older one looked too clever for his own good. He needed to be watched too. The way he'd tricked Walter and then released the dogs, Rosalind had seen slick before but he made Teflon grease look sticky.

Although appalled at what Hector had done, Rosalind selfishly still didn't want her work destroyed and yet, she wanted in no way to stop these children. Not that she was able to stop these children from doing what they set out to do, which was to save their parents. It was on all of their minds, (as if some hive mind and they were its bees), but Rosalind couldn't read them individually. Maybe the concentration of their similar thoughts made them amalgamate into a more physical thing? Like sand, insubstantial until made into concrete.

The funny thing was that the goal they set for themselves, they were doing admirably. And Rosalind rooted for them, since Hector should've never done such a horrible thing. Had he even considered--considering his life--what these children would suffer from growing up without parents? Oh, Rosalind could see Hector had no malice in his heart, his thoughts completely open to her, but in reacting, he'd gone far beyond the pale. Kidnapping people! What in the world was he thinking? she thought rhetorically, since she knew what he was thinking. Not that Rosalind had anyone to speak with this about.

But it seemed that when we seek a way to something, we find it when we desire it enough. And Rosalind now longed for a way to communicate with her son, and to all the others now in the house. And so, it seemed, a way found her instead.

Chapter 13

A True Variable

Or, well, one of the children found her.

On the second floor where Hector had set up for his complex device, Rosalind had followed the children, worried about them, although she saw no way yet to help them. It seemed she was useless to everyone.

The machine Hector built to explore his string theories was a thing of brilliance. The possibility that he might be able to punch a hole through dimensional space and perhaps look into another universe, a bubble universe, Rosalind heard him call it in his thoughts, was beyond her understanding but a marvel to behold. Like Hector where it concerned genetics, she couldn't comprehend the brilliant device he had invented when at the corporation. Rosalind only noticed the results.

The blond had walked through one of its weird contortions of space and came out into an area where Rosalind stood just beyond that barrier between her and the world.

The girl opened a door and found Rosalind there. Rosalind knew by the girl's eyes that Lyse was looking at her. The barrier appeared thin here; the colors of things appeared brighter, vivid but not that vivid.

Excited, Rosalind immediately began talking to the girl. The girl's mouth moved but Rosalind could not hear what the girl said. After a moment, the girl stopped, as if it seemed useless to her and that was when the girl's thoughts, wisps of them really, reached Rosalind's seeking mind.

In the briefest of thoughts, Rosalind sensed the girl's name, pronounced Li-see, and that the children sometimes caller her, "Lice," as in the mites that infested your hair, in a mutilation of its spelling, simply because they knew it "bugged" her. Why children were so cruel escaped Rosalind, but then, the next whiff of a thought told her that the girl understood this as their way of showing affection for her, something they'd just grown up doing.

The girl disappeared before Rosalind could get her to understand. Quick as a whip, Lyse dashed back out the door, a look of fear in her bright, blue eyes.

Later, as Rosalind pondered this encounter, she postulated that the emotional contact between them lacked the proper intensity for her to delve into the girl's deeper thoughts, since Rosalind had no problem with Hector, Monty and Walter's thoughts. Supposition does not prove a theory; it only informs your parameters. However, Rosalind now believed that Hector's device put her closer to her pre-life world, just not close enough.

But the encounter with the girl gave Rosalind an idea. Lyse had seen her without understanding exactly what she saw. It was sort of like practicing science in a way; you probed the unknown until you deciphered it, or found a true variable. The blond was Rosalind's true variable. Her x equals--if you will.

Now, Rosalind wondered, how do I convey my hypothesis to any one of these people to let them know that I'm still here?

Ruefully, she thought, _the things a ghost will go through to live one more day._

Chapter 14

Ape Fiend Is Only One R from Ape Friend

The gorilla deposited Ben on a soft, down bed. He pointed at the boy and said, "Ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk ... ahk, ahk, ahk!" *

*Translation of Monty's words, "Don't move!"

Ben raised his hands in surrender. He knew when he'd lost. The gorilla was between him and the door anyways. So Ben did what Ben did best, he tried to talk his way out of the problem. "Look monkey. I'm not here to cause any trouble. I just want to get my Dad back. That's it."

The gorilla pulled out an I-phone. He pointed at Ben's phone in his pocket.

"Ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk, ahk," he said. *

*Translation of Monty's words, "Hey, boy, I need your digits."

Sweating now, Ben was still trying to talk his way out this mess. "Look, that's not my problem. I just want to leave." He felt like crying, but didn't want to in front of the ape. "I just want to go home," he whined.

"Ahk?" the ape said*

*Translation of Monty's words, "What?"

Something came over the gorilla, the hardness around his eyes softened, and he tilted his head in sympathy. He sat down beside Ben and patted him on the back.

"I just want to go play X-box. And not be eaten by a gorilla."

Still patting his back, Monty put his hand in Ben's pocket and pulled out the phone. He swiped his phone across Ben's. There was a tinkle.

Monty picked up his I-phone and began punching keys.

A second later, the phone began buzzing. Ben looked up from his whining, a few tears now in his eyes. He looked down at the phone.

Monty pointed at the phone and said, "Ahk." *

Translation of Monty's words, "Pick up the phone, doofus."

Finally, Ben caught on to what the ape was trying to convey. He picked up the phone and turned on the screen. In the text bubble of Lyse's phone he read: "I'm not gonna hurt you kid. I don't roll like that."

Ben's eyes shot upwards. "You can talk!"

Monty typed--Ben's phone tinkled. "No, but I can text."

"Cool! You're like a hairy hero! You're like a bushy bodyguard! You're like--" His phone buzzed.

"I'm like a gorilla. Now listen."

"Oh, okay," Ben said. He picked up the phone and started typing.

Monty's phone buzzed. He read. "I mean this is really cool. You're like King Kong! You're like the--the greatest!"

Monty typed. "Look. I know this is cool but stick with me here. You need to get your parents out of here before Hector does something stupid, like accidentally murder them. He means well but he's out of his depth here. Even I know that."

"Who's Hector?" Ben typed; his eyes on the phone's screen.

Monty typed. "The man who took your parents. This is his house." Monty went on to explain how Hector's mom had just passed away and how his father had left him when he was young.

Ben frowned. He typed: "My Mom and Dad divorced when I was a baby." His eyes downcast, Ben looked a little sad by that fact.

Monty typed: "Hey, kid. Don't let it bother you. Sometimes your parents just can't stay together; they have too many problems to solve them." Monty was thinking of his home in Africa. There was nothing he wanted more than to return home. He knew that that was a dream too big to dream. And right now, he had other problems. He needed to get these kids and their parents out of this house. But first things first. He needed to get this kid's mind right so they could think of a way to save everybody.

Monty typed. "When your parents aren't with you, that hurts in ways no one but you understand. But you've got your Dad--"

"And Step mom," Ben added in his text message.

Monty nodded, typing: "And Step mom. And that's more than some people have." Again, Monty was thinking about his home in Africa. More and more each day, he missed that. The sense of peace he had felt with his family--when his family was whole--had taken on mythic proportions in his heart, and his ache for them grew each day.

"Oh, I know that," Ben typed, still a little glum about it. He looked up at the ape with pain in his eyes--then back at the screen, and typed: "It's just ... I don't fit in in my Dad's new family. I always feel like the outsider when I'm there. They're his family now, and I don't know, I feel left out." Telling the ape this depressed him even more.

Monty stared at him a long time, and then typed: "I was torn from my home, from my family when I was six. I was captured by some men in a big net. They put me in a crate and then for many days I huddled in the crate, eating rotten bananas, getting sick because the world was titling so much from a terrible storm and then more days of riding in a truck. And when the crate was opened, I was goaded into a dirty cage and people paid to look at me. And each day I grew weaker, I had no will to live. Children threw bananas at me. I hate bananas now. I would lay in the cage curled up in a ball, hoping for a way out."

"It wasn't until two years later that Rosalind Proctor, the man's mother, bought me from the men that stole me and for the first time in a long time, I was free. She saved me from some bad people, I've been told. Do you understand?" He looked up at Ben, waiting.

His face serious, Ben nodded.

Monty typed some more: "And although I didn't know her name at the time, she was nice enough and she treated me well. She gave me hugs. She made me better, smarter, taught me how to read and write. I grew up with her son, Hector, and for a long time, I almost believed I was a human. Over time I forgot about those long-ago dreams of my home and family, grew out of them and became the ape I am today. Over time I came to love the lady, to call her Mom, just as if she were my own. And I believe she loved me."

"Does this have a point?" Ben said, looking up from the text screen.

Monty nodded. He typed: "For each day the men had me, I kept hoping someone would save me. And each day, no one did. You can't live on hope--it will let you down. Better to accept what you've got and make the most of that. Like people, no one's life is ever perfect, some things we want, we will never get, and some things we get, we never want, but being mad or sad about it just wastes your time. Enjoy the life you have, not the one you don't."

"You're like me," Ben typed. "I want my family back together, although I know that that won't ever happen. I love my Dad but I only see him on the weekends."

Monty typed: "That's better than me. I miss my Dad too but I haven't seen him in years. I would love to see him every other weekend. I think sometimes that we can only have so much happiness in the world. Some of it will always be pain, but it's that pain that balances out the joy." But Monty didn't tell the boy that although Hector treated him fairly for the three weeks he'd been here, he now didn't treat Monty like a brother anymore, more like a servant, and that hurt Monty a little. And Monty knew that if he got the chance--and he knew this was a long shot, if anything--he would escape but he might never get home again, not without help, not without someone getting him on a boat. As a part of his education, Rosalind had taught Monty math, reading, writing, and other subjects, and one of those subjects was geography. Monty knew that he came from a long way away. Much farther now it seemed than the memories he'd long ago forgotten.

Ben typed: "Well, sometimes it's alright. Me and Lyse, we fight all the time. Well, me and Bell too."

"I think you and me are a lot alike," Monty typed,

"Yeah," Ben said.

They sat there on Monty's bed, their backs now against the wall typing on their phones, not looking at each other when Ben heard something--a scream maybe?

"Hey! Did you hear that," he said aloud.

Monty nodded.

"That sounded like Bell!"

Chapter 15

The Teetering Tank

On the security camera, Doctor Proctor watched the dark-haired girl run down the hallway. It looked like--she was heading straight for him! He got excited. Where was Monty? He thought frantically, realizing that Monty had disappeared out of the camera's range when he'd ran around the corner.

Darn it! The girl was coming down the hallway. For a moment, Hector's dislike for Monty came out in full force. His resentment of Monty wasn't rational, and Hector knew it. He just couldn't control it at times. Monty had spent all these years with his mother, as if his mother favored Monty over him, and when Hector thought of that, he started acting like he hated Monty. He hated Monty right now for sure. Where was he?

Hector had no time to prepare for her. He tried to call Monty one more time but the ape's phone was busy, (Or he ignored the doctor's message--he did that sometimes.) or he was busy with one of the other little brats. He would have to deal with her himself, the doctor decided.

This only angered the doctor more. He wanted to conduct his review, and work on his mother's work, not baby sit. The kids were ruining everything, which only made Hector's anger grow. Since the corporation had fired him, Hector couldn't seem to get his anger in check. He hated everything: trees, cars, money, dogs and cats, umbrellas, and all things in between. He hated kids but only because he had no friends growing up (And he remembered how cruel the kids were to him.) and he'd never understood or experienced the joy of childhood. _They should've never laid me off_ , he thought, his rage bitter and sour.

And he used to be such a calm and steady person.

The turned up the music in an attempt to soften his anger--it was one of his few joys now.

And though Hector didn't realize this, the music was loud enough to come through the door of the security room.

Bell didn't recognize the singer, but he was going on about Jeremiah the bullfrog. Apparently, he was a good friend of his. But if somebody was nearby, she was at least gonna take a peek at them.

When she eased open the door, she found the man staring right at her, a look of intense anger on his face, as if he expected her.

"Hello, little girl," he said and his voice was cruel-sounding, full of the evil things in his heart.

Bell stared at the doctor for half a second, trying to decide what to do, then she ran back out of the room.

The doctor jumped from his seat and followed her. But when he got outside, the girl had disappeared. He walked down the hallway, checking the locked doors, until he finally found one that was unlocked.

He opened it and walked in. It was a white room, sterile-looking with a work station island in the middle of the room. The island had two stainless-steel sinks, two long, curved-neck water faucets, with some test tubes sitting off to the right-hand side of it. In front of it about three feet away, sat two aquariums full of brown, common slugs.

Hector had no idea what they were there for, or what his mother had done to them. He needed to be careful with these.

At first, Hector didn't recognize the room. The mansion had changed so much over the years that discerning one room from the other proved difficult, and there were many sterile, white rooms in the mansion now.

"You need to come out of here little girl." Then he remembered his mother's notes. Hector got nervous. These were some really bad slugs. "I mean it!" he said more forcefully. "Come out right now!"

He reached behind him and turned the lock on the door. It he had to drag the girl out of here, he wouldn't have time to lock it and he didn't want any of the other kids getting in here. When they left, the door would automatically lock behind them.

But the girl never appeared.

He eased down the far side of the room, keeping close to the wall, trying to see around the aquariums. "This is a dangerous place. If you come out, I'll let you go home. You want to go home don't you?"

Bell huddled behind the island, and kept her mouth shut.

"I know you're in here. I keep all the doors locked for security reasons." The doctor was big on security, now that he had none, which revived his anger at the corporation for firing him. He felt a bitter pang of resentment for a moment.

Finally, it came back to him--the slugs! Oh, my goodness! He looked over his shoulder at the aquariums, wary now, nervous. These could kill someone.

It was at this moment that Bell saw her chance. The man was on the far side of the aquariums.

She jumped out and headed for the door.

But the man quickly sidled back towards her, his arms out like a soccer goalie.

"Leave me alone you evil Dr. Doolittle," Bell yelled at him. She backpedaled. Her hand touched a test tube. Bell picked it up and fired it at his head. "Take that!"

Dodging the test tube, Hector slammed into the aquarium with a thud and an oomph! He pushed the aquarium to the edge of the table it sat on. Hector tried to grab it, and in fact, he got his arms around it, but the bulky object was already teetering towards a fall.

It slipped out of his hands.

The teetering tank hit the tank next to it. The glass to the second tank shattered in a loud pop and the first tank fell into the frame of the other one. With a loud crash, both fell to the floor!

Hector stumbled backwards, horror on his face. What do I do now? He thought. But the horror of the slugs stopped him from rushing forward.

They fell at his feet. About ten turned on him slowly immediately. At his foot, the droplets of acid they propelled fell on his shoe.

Pain shot into his foot, burning like hot coals. "Oh, Goodness!" Hector screamed. He bounced on one foot out the door, as it automatically closed behind him. He wasn't thinking about the girl; his intense pain occluded all other thoughts.

_The door!_ Hector thought, horrified. He hobbled back towards the security room. He had to get the door unlocked or that girl was dead! He'd left her inside the room, left her to be devoured by killer slugs.

Chapter 16

Attack of the Killer Slugs

The slugs slithered out across the floor, leaving slime trails in all directions. Their tiny minds sensed something, something they wanted, sensed something delicious. They sensed meat! With little squeals of pleasure that sounded like a thousand squeaky shoes on one well-waxed, tile floor, the slugs slowly turned toward the source of that pleasure--Bell!

When Bell peeked from behind the island, she saw the doctor close the door behind him. The slugs by then were spread widely across the tile floor, slowly fanning out inside the room.

Bell watched as the slugs inched towards her. No big whoop. They were yucky but they were just ordinary slugs. Looking for something to move them out of her way, she opened the cabinet doors beneath the island and disturbed a mouse hiding inside. The mouse scampered across the floor.

The mouse ran right into the middle of the slugs. It hurdled the first few slugs. But then one slug took aim with a tube on its forehead and shot a droplet of liquid towards the mouse. The droplet hit the mouse. The mouse added a squeal of pain to the thousands of the slug squeaks.

The mouse jumped, as another slug shot another droplet at it. The mouse squealed again. It tried to turn and go back to the island, moving slower, but now ten slugs were honed in on it. They too shot droplets at the mouse.

When these hit the mouse, its fur started smoking. I squealed in pain, now dragging one leg.

"What?" Bell said as she watched the mouse struggle to evade the slugs. But by now, a hundred had a bead on it. A hundred droplets hit the mouse and it curled up in intense pain. It writhed on the ground and like iron fillings attracted by a magnet, the slugs convened on the mouse.

They smelled meat, delicious meat!

The slugs attacked, surrounding the critter, bombarding it like boys in a spitball game. Another minute later, the mouse roiled and squirmed in agony.

After a minute, the mouse stopped moving and the slugs began to inch across its body. Minutes later, they crawled all over it, a big, writhing, slimy mass. The slugs crawled over, around, and in between each other to get at the mouse. Bell watched horrified by what she saw. They--they were eating it.

When it was over, Bell couldn't get the sickening smell of burnt hair out of her mind and those squeals of the dying mouse--like the sound effects in a scary movie--kept replaying in her head. But now she had no doubt that the slugs were shooting drops of acid out of their tubes. No doubt at all.

The rest of the slugs--as Bell, still in shock, watched the mouse die--spread across the entire floor. They turned, focused on her, heading towards her like she was the magnet now. The entire floor was covered in their slimy trails.

Slowly, they moved another inch closer ....

Bell jumped upon the island, hoping it would keep her safe. The slugs now surrounded the island, well, about two feet away.

A few minutes later, when she glanced over the edge, the slugs inched toward her still. They were ... well, they were closer.

Five minutes later, the slugs started climbing up the side of the island, leaving slimy trials behind them. Bell lay on her stomach, her hands under her chin and watched them in curiosity. ...

.... Boy they sure were slow ... the slugs were another inch higher up the island. She expected elevator music to spontaneously arise, considering how much waiting was involved.

Looking around, Bell saw no means of escape. She couldn't jump across them, even standing on the island, and they were slowly inching up its side.

She looked up at the ceiling for a second but only saw a ventilation vent above her. That might be large enough to squirm through.

Bell stretched out her arm, trying to touch it, but it lay just beyond her reach.

She stood on her tiptoes--teetering a little--stretched farther. Her fingers missed the louvers in the vent by an inch. It was close, close! When she looked down, a few slugs neared the edge of the island. When they reached the edge, some flew off for some reason, as if flicked by an invisible hand.

Grunting in frustration, she stood back on her tip toes. Her fingers reaching for the vent, Bell jumped, her hand brushing the vent, but she didn't grab it. She jumped again. And again. The slugs rounded the corner, now fifty or more, emitting peals of pleasure. Meat! Meat!

Bell jumped again. A few more of the slugs flew off the island. Stopping, she began kicking at the slugs but after a volley of acid from the little beasts, Bell stopped. She backed into the center of the island.

She had no choice, she either grabbed the vent or these slugs would eat her next. She jumped again, brushing it with her fingertips. "Oh, come on!" she yelled.

Her heart pounding, Bell jumped again.

She jumped again and missed again. And intense pain exploded in her foot. "Ow!" When she looked down, her tennis shoe was smoking.

Desperate, Bell jumped again and missed. Tears in her eyes and fearing for her life, Bell jumped again.

Another bead hit her shoe. "Lord! That hurts" When she looked down there were over a hundred slugs surrounding her. She wasn't getting out of this.

She jumped again. And in mid-air, the vent swung open and two, large hairy hands reached down and grabbed Bell by her wrists.

The slugs were scary but the sight before her made her scream. Dangling in the air, the hands pulled her upwards. Bell looked up and saw two dark, shiny eyes staring down at her.

Seeing those eyes, her second scream was loud, long and one hundred percent heartfelt.

Chapter 17

In the Den

Lyse and Carson ran up the flight of stairs and into another hallway. _This house must be all hallways,_ she thought. They raced down it, pausing to check doors, looking for a place to hide.

They slowed down, tiring, about middle ways down. It was a long hallway.

"We need to find a place to hide, Carson," Lyse said.

"Okay," Carson said. "What about Mom and Dad?"

"We'll find them, just be patient." Lyse was a little flustered. This hadn't turned out as she had expected. When they'd started this misadventure, she'd expected this to take no longer than an hour. Now it looked like it might take them all night. And that thought flustered her.

They continued to walk down the hallway, but Carson quickly grew bored with it.

"We need to find Mama and Daddy."

"I know Carson," Lyse said impatiently.

"Mama said for you to quit yelling at me," Carson said.

"Well, she's not here."

"I'm telling her when I see her again."

"Will you be quiet, fart head?"

"Fart face," Carson shot back.

"Fart eyes."

"Fart lips," Carson said, giggling.

"Fart butt."

"Fart fingers."

"Farty, fart-fart," Lyse said. It helped to relieve the tension.

The first door they found open, they entered. The room was white, the walls white, the floor white tile, and the ceiling, well, white. A ceiling fan whirred in the center of the room. It was a large room and down at the far end of it, near the window, were about five cages that looked like they housed some kind of animals.

"Ssppl-lookie here, boys. We got company!" A voice said in the room.

"Who said that?" Carson said, looking around.

Lyse, alert now, looked for the person but didn't see a soul. And the room was fairly bare. The cages in the back, two tables on the back wall that held a bunch of bowls and some bags of something, and a chair to their right and a television set next to the chair. That was it.

"Yoo-hoo, I'm over here!"

Cautious now, Lyse and Carson slowly walked towards the back of the room, still searching for whoever was talking. In this creepy place, Lyse thought, remembering the ghost, it might be the invisible man.

When they reached the back wall, checking around the chair, and glancing underneath the tables, although you could see under them, Lyse and Carson stood there mystified.

"You heard that didn't you, Carson?" Lyse said.

Carson nodded, "As plain as the nose on your face, I heard it."

Lyse nodded.

"Hey!" the voice said and both of them looked down at the animal in the pen.

"What in the world?" Lyse said. It looked like a made-up animal. It had a beaver tail, webbed feet and a duck's bill. But it was covered in sleek, wet fur.

The animal's bill moved. "Yeah, me."

Without prompting, Lyse and Carson skittered in fright clear across the room. They stood there, Lyse's hand on the doorknob, both panting in fear.

Carson said, "That hairy duck was talking."

Lyse looked down at him like he was crazy. "That duck was not talking." She shook her head at the insanity. "And it wasn't a duck."

"It had a bill," Carson said, practically.

"Don't matter. It wasn't no duck."

"It had holes in it," Carson said, as if that made it more obvious.

Getting mad, Lyse said, "It wasn't no duck. And it wasn't talking either."

Carson rolled his eyes. "That duck was talking."

"Come on," Lyse said. She grabbed his hand and led him back to the cages.

"I was wondering if you were coming back," the animal said again.

"See?" Carson said.

For a moment, Lyse thought she'd lost her mind. This wasn't happening. Not in a million years was this happening. "You can't be real."

"Real as ssppl--sunshine, ssppl--sunshine."

"No, no, no, no!" Lyse said.

"Deal with it, ssppl--sister," the animal said.

Carson said, "How can you be talking? Animals don't talk." He looked up at Lyse. "Do they?"

"No, they don't," Lyse said.

"Yes, they do," the animal said.

In the other cages, two more swam out of the little pool at the back of the cage. "Buenos Noches!" they said in unison.

"Don't mind them, they're idiots," the animal said.

Carson said, "I say you're a duck. Lyse says you're not. What are you?"

"I'm a Platypus, kid."

"A what a pus?" Carson said.

"You know." The Platypus actually shrugged, though it was an ineffective way for him to communicate. "A--a platypus."

Coming back from the shock, Lyse said. "How in the world are you talking? This is unreal!" Her head felt like it was blowing right off the top of her head, right off the top of it. Just exploding, with strangeness. She shook her head. _I've gone crazy,_ she thought. _Something has scrambled my brains_. That's the only thing that explained it. First a ghost, and now a talking Platypus.

"Hey! Hey" the Platypus said. "Ssppl-Sister, don't let me interrupt your melt down."

Lyse looked down at it and thought, just go with it. Maybe you'll come out the other side of this. "What?" she said impatiently.

The Platypus looked at Carson and said," Is ssppl--she always this testy?"

Carson nodded dolefully.

"Listen, you two. I need to get out of this cage. Think you can help me do that?"

"Sure," Carson said and he reached for the latch on the cage.

Lyse put her hand on his shoulder. "Wait a minute, Carson." She spoke slowly, carefully, trying to remain calm. Maybe it would go away if she didn't explode?

"We're looking for our parents," Carson said. "Have you seen them?"

"Ssppl--buddy. I'm a Platypus, not a tour guide."

"Then you don't know where our parents are?" Carson said.

"Now, I didn't ssppl-say that. I just ssppl--said I wasn't a tour guide. Maybe I can help?"

"What?" Lyse said.

"You know, ssppl--help?"

She looked at Carson and said, "I can only half understand what he says."

"Ssppl-sister, what do you expect. I have two paddles for lips."

Finally giving in, Lyse said, "We're looking for our parents."

"I know," the platypus said. "The ssppl-smart one already told me."

"So, you can't help us?" Lyse said.

"Now, I didn't ssppl-say that. I heard on the grapevine, and by that I mean, I heard the man ssppl-say that they're on the third floor. He was talking to that flea bag, dog man."

Lyse had no idea what dog man the platypus was talking about so she ignored it. "On the third floor?" she said again.

"That's what I ssppl--said, ssppl-sister."

"How do we get there?"

"Uh, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you are on the third floor, ssppl-sister."

"No," Lyse said. "Where up here?"

"I can't tell you but I can ssppl--show you. The lady took us out for walks occasionally and I ssppl--saw the cage room once."

"The cage room?" Carson said.

"That's what I ssppl--said, brother."

The other two Platypuses started talking to them, but neither Lyse nor Carson could understand them.

"What did they say," Lyse asked.

The Platypus said, "I don't know. I don't speak Spanglish. Or that crap they're speaking either."

Lyse looked from one to the other, trying to decide what she should do. Could she trust these ... animals? She walked off, trying to think.

Growing desperate, the Platypus said. "Hey look! Take me with you."

"With us?" Carson said.

"Yeah, it's lonely here. These two only ssppl--speak ssppl--Spanish. I don't have anyone to talk to."

"Will you be good?" Carson said.

"As good as any ssppl-platypus can be."

"Okay. We'll get your friends later."

When Lyse returned, having decided to take the animal with them, Carson already had him in hand, holding him by his sides.

"Careful," the platypus said. "That tickles."

Lyse just rolled her eyes and prayed for help against the madness. _At least it can't get any crazier,_ she thought.

"By the way, what's your name?" Carson said.

"Everyone calls me ssppl-Spanky."

In desperation, Lyse said, half sarcastically. "I don't suppose you have a way for us to get into the room, do you?"

"No," Spanky said. "But over there on the table is a master key. The lock ssppl--sticks ssppl--sometimes, ssppl--so the man brought it in here the last time when he was feeding us. By the way, don't we need to take ssppl--supplies?"

"We'll come back to get them," Lyse said. "Besides, you look a little fat. It might do you good to skip a few meals."

"Hey!" The platypus protested. "I didn't ssppl--say anything about you, did I?"

Ignoring him, Lyse gestured for Carson to follow her. The other two Platypuses started talking, one waved goodbye.

"Idiots," Spanky said. "When this ssppl--started, I told them not to watch Univision. But who listens to me? No one, I'll tell you that. It's enough to make me cry in frustration. I tell you true."

And they walked out of the room with Spanky still talking.

Chapter 18

Kicking and Screaming

In another part of the mansion, Monty dragged Bell by her arm, kicking and screaming down the ventilation shaft. Down the long, main trunk line of the system and down into another vent with her yelling, "Let go of me! Let go of me! Let me go!" all the way. He dragged her down another line and then dropped her onto the bed in his room where Ben waited.

"I was wondering where you got off to," he said to Bell, grinning like an idiot.

Bell looked at him, then up at the vent. "Did that gorilla just save my life?" Her eyes were wide, her voice full of awe.

"Oh, Monty? He sure did."

"Monty?" Bell said incredulously. "You named it?"

"Noo, he named himself," Ben said defensively. Bell didn't know why.

Monty dropped down into the room a second later.

"By the way, Monty says he knows where Mom and Dad are."

Bell looked from her brother to the ape, confused, still afraid of the ape--and for herself a bit but her overriding fear was for Ben--and said, "Wha?" She didn't know how to handle this. Had Ben gone bonkers? Had she gone bonkers?

Ben went on, "I think he'll show us where--if we ask nicely."

Bell still wasn't getting it. But finally, her brain showed up. "How--how can you talk to a gorilla?" she said. Bell could see he was talking to it, no, her question was how had he figured it out, but it came out muddled, like her thoughts at the moment.

Ben looked at her like she was a little daft. "The same way everyone else in the world talks to each other," he said like it was obvious.

"Huh?" Bell said.

"You know?" Ben said. "Texting?" He rolled his hands to help her get what he was saying. *

*Ben wouldn't learn until years later that all gorillas can't talk--both him and Monty.

Ben looked down at Lyse's phone again, then looked at the gorilla and nodded to him.

Fully recovered now, Bell said, "What'd he say?"

Ben grinned. "He said, 'Duh!'" he replied and then added with another glance at his phone. "Booger brains."

Beside him, the gorilla snickered, which was something new to Bell; she'd heard chimps chuckle, Gibbons guffaw and Orangutans chortle but never a gorilla snicker. She thought it was cute.

"Well, you've found me. Now what? Is he dangerous?"

"What? Monty? No. Misunderstood, yes, but not dangerous."

"Will he help us find Mom and Dad?"

"Will you?" Ben said to the gorilla.

Monty nodded. He started typing on his phone.

Ben looked down at his phone, read it and said, "He said they're on the third floor. In a room at the back of the house."

Fully recovered now, Bell said. "Great! Let's go then! You can lead the way--Monty."

The three of them walked back into the hallway.

Chapter 19

Rattle Rabbits

The doctor immediately saw them on his security camera. "Drats and tarnations!" He needed to stop this before they ruined everything. He sat there, rubbing his chin, thinking, and then his face lit up.

One of his mother's experiments involved crossing a rattlesnake with a jack rabbit. For what reason, he didn't know. He hadn't completely read her notes yet. They were really fast, had a deadly bite and were vicious little creatures. He called them rattle rabbits because for some reason, his mother couldn't breed out the rattlers--or the viciousness. So, where fluffy little bunny tails should have been, there were rattlers. There were about forty in a room another fifty yards ahead of where the group now walked. And if he opened their cages and the door, they would attack the group. It was these buttons he didn't want to touch.

He wanted the room and cages next to the rabbits--the one that held the soft, downy, vegetarian Anacondas--they were gentle to people and never ate them, but they would horribly suffocate a carrot.

He just wasn't sure if he was choosing the right buttons. With trepidation, Hector searched, telling himself, "Don't press the wrong button."

Nervous, when he felt pretty sure he had the right ones, despite his confusion with the system, Hector pushed the wrong button and released all of the rattle rabbits.

"Oh drats!" he said as on the camera, all forty of the rattle rabbit cages opened and they slowly filter out of the room and into the hallway.

Bell, Ben and Monty walked down the hallway when they heard a most furious racket!

"Man, that sounds like a herd of angry toddlers," Ben said.

Monty's eyes grew wide. He started typing on his phone.

Ben looked when his phone tinkled. "Rattle rabbits? What are those?"

"Deadly!" was all Monty typed before the first one appeared around the corner.

"Oh," Bell said. "Isn't it cute?" She scrunched down and started calling the beast like a dog. "Here boy. Here boy." Smooching at it and clapping her hands.

Ben grabbed her arm. "We need to get into a room, like now!"

Confused, Bell said, "What for?"

"Cause Monty says that if one of those rabbits bites you, you will die!"

They raced down the hallway as thirty-nine more of the beasts hit the corner and seeing them, gave chase.

Just before the stairs that led to the third floor, they found an open door.

Bell slammed the door shut just as a rattle rabbit slammed into it. Sounding like a convention of drummer boys, the others reached the door in seconds.

As Bell, Ben and Monty leaned against the door with the sound of a wood saw coming from the other side, a hole opened about a foot off the floor and one long tooth slid through it.

"They're gnawing through the door!" Bell screamed.

Chapter 20

The Hole in the Wall

The room they were in had a hole in it. Lyse looked at the Platypus and said, "Since when do we have to crawl through that?"

"Ssppl--since this is the way to get to the cage room."

"I thought you were talking about another door? Not this ... thing!" The hole looked strange, with gnaw marks around its rim; she could see no more than a foot into it--after that, it became a black void.

They had tried all the doors in the hallway but found them locked. Not even the key worked for them. That was when the Platypus had said, "I know another way." This was that way.

The Platypus in Carson's hands nodded. "We could, if I knew the way into that room but I don't. This is the way I went the last time I found it."

"You found it? What were you doing?" Lyse was thinking about the marks around the edge of the hole.

"Nothing really. I was trying to escape--hence the hole, but the lady caught me and my crew before we got far. I don't know how, we had a poster over the hole, just like in the movie."

"Movie? Lord, Carson we've a film buff on our hands."

"Not really" the platypus corrected. "I just watched a lot of TV when in the ssppl--cell."

"How in the world did you watch TV?" Lyse knew she shouldn't ask but they were getting nowhere and for some reason, despite the unproductive talk, she really felt she needed to get to the end of this.

"Well, ssppl--she left the remote," the platypus said and shrugged, or tried to.

"Lyse, I can do it!" Carson said, handing her the ... the platypus. Lyse held it gingerly out from her like it was about to start peeing or something.

"No Carson, you're too small," Lyse said, still holding the platypus like it had a contagious disease or the runs. For all Lyse knew it might have both.

"Listen to the boy, ssspll-sister. He's ssppl--small enough to get through that hole. Be-ssppl-sides, the doors are locked."

"Then why did you give us this key?" Lyse asked, holding it up for the Platypus to see.

"It did open them but I guess the man changed ssppl--something."

Lyse rolled her eyes.

"He can ssppl--crawl through to the other ssppl--side and open the door from in there."

Lyse thought about this and said more to herself than the Platypus, "They do open more easily from inside." She stood there thinking, her brow furrowed--until she remembered that she'd read in Vogue it caused wrinkles. "Could you do that Carson?"

Excited, Carson said, "I can do it, Lyse! I can!"

Still worried about Carson, Lyse said, "Nooo."

Getting mad, Carson said, "Well, I'm tired of being too little. I'm doing this one."

"Okay," Lyse said, with a shrug.

"Really?"

"Yes, you're the only one who can get through that hole and open the door."

He pumped his fist and said, "Alright! I'm big enough now!"

"No, you're ssppl--still too ssppl--small but big enough for this," the Platypus said.

Ecstatic now, Carson went to the hole and bent down in front of it. He rested his hand on the top edge of it. "I'm going," he said, as serious as Indiana Jones heading into an ancient tomb.

"Be careful," Lyse said, "There might be rats in there."

"There might be ssppl--spiders in there too," the Platypus added.

"And bugs," Lyse said.

An unsure look appeared in Carson's eyes. He looked from one to the other, waiting on them to finish, the apprehension spreading to his face. He said, unsurely, "Now I don't want to be so big anymore."

Realizing what he might lose, Spanky said, "Come on, kid, you can do it. No matter what ssppl--size you are." Offering him encouragement.

And to see Carson's eyes light up made Spanky feel good about what he'd said. It hadn't been so long ago that he too was too little to do anything fun either.

"I can do it," Carson said one more time before he disappeared into the dark hole.

And that's how Lyse lost Carson.

Chapter 21

The Diminutive Man

The rabbits were still trying to get through the door Bell, Ben and Monty hovered behind, as Carson, lost now--since he'd taken a left turn in the dark hole--descended the third-floor stairs, humming to himself.

The rabbits stopped rattling, they stopped gnawing, and they turned towards the new sound. Carson continued down the hall way. He didn't see the rabbits; they were at the far end and sitting there, waiting.

Then one snarled, revealing two long, sharp fangs. Another snarled, and this got Carson's attention.

Not understanding the danger, he stood there looking at the trace of rabbits. He smiled; they were so cute.

Then the rabbits hunkered down, set their feet and came at Carson like a train with loose parts.

Still not understanding, Carson just stood there.

They made it half way down the corridor when from a side hallway, the diminutive man raced out.

He turned the curve in a flash, backhand-slapped the first bunch of rabbits and sent them scattering. The others behind it slammed into the slapped ones. A passel of rabbits stumbled and fell upon each other, biting and snarling in mayhem.

The diminutive man raced towards the now startled Carson, who still stood there but at least, he'd stopped humming. The little man scooped Carson up in his arms.

Hey!" Carson said.

The rabbits recovered, and resumed the chase.

The man tossed Carson over his shoulder and ran down the hallway but a few of the faster rabbits caught them. They nipped at his heels but couldn't seem to get a bite at his ankles. Too hairy, Carson presumed as he watched the rabbits race around the man's ankles. Every time one swooped in for a bite, it suddenly spun away as if car hitting an oil slick.

The diminutive man raced down the stairs, stifling the rabbit's efforts. When the trace of rabbits hit the stairs, they sounded like a drum set rolling down a hill. Thump, clash, rattle, rattle, rattle!

At the bottom of the stairs, the man ran on. A few rabbits caught him again, and soon, instead of biting him, two got their long teeth stuck in his fur. They slowed him down but also had a lucky effect: As the rabbits got stuck in the thick mat of hair around his ankles like pigheaded hairballs, he dragged them along like a trapper coming home from a good day's work, and this kept the others at bay. His feet looked like racing furs.

The little man ran towards the library, flung open the door and began running around inside, almost a blur of motion. He jumped upon the chair, then to a table, to a ladder, flinging rabbits from his ankles like a dog shakes off water. Like leading sheep, the rabbits followed each other inside. Jumping and leaping at the man who in the last instant dodged them, from chair, to table, to ladder, to the other chair. The man hit a lamp stand and sent it flying. It careened into the air, bounced off a wall, and came down on a mess of rabbits, injuring a few.

The man jumped to the table. He stopped there, breathing heavily with Carson still thrown over his shoulder.

When he was sure all of the rabbits were inside the room, the man made one gigantic leap and sailed over the entire crew of rattling, hissing beasts.

He hit the floor, grabbed at the doorknob to the library and missed, but his momentum was enough to still slam the door with a thud.

The man put Carson on the ground, and bent over, gasping, his eyes squinted up in agony from his burning lungs. Behind them, the oak door thumped and boomed like someone on the other side was practicing pitching baseballs.

The hairy, little man said, "Awk, awk."

"They will have a hard time gnawing through that door." To Carson it looked as hard as rock.

The hairy, little man stood up. "Awk, awk," he said.

Carson's eyes lit up. "I'm hungry too!"

"Awk," the hairy, little man said.

"Oh, okay, sure," Carson replied as if he'd said something.

Carson followed the man, who was only a foot taller than him and quiet comforting to be around. It was as if the man exuded some aura of stillness; his bearing that of someone confident, distinguished, at peace with the world.

They strolled down the hallway, and the diminutive man led Carson into a room full of shiny appliances, a kitchen.

The kitchen was huge--three times as big as Carson's room at home. Carson walked into the room, marveling at all the shiny stainless-steel appliances--a double-door refrigerator, a large oven.

The hairy, little man gestured towards the refrigerator. "Awk."

"I think I will," Carson said. "I hope there are bananas in there." Carson had a strong hankering for a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

The shiny refrigerator held that and all kinds of fresh food, most Carson couldn't name but he recognized the drawer full of oranges, apples, and bananas.

The diminutive man said, "Awk."

Carson, his head all the way in the refrigerator, said, "Well, please to meet you Walter. I'm Carson."

Walter said, "Awk."

Carson pulled out some bananas and peanut butter and when he opened it, the smell made Carson's heart twitter with joy. Peanut butter and banana sandwiches were his favorite.

"Awk!" Walter said and Carson agreed, nodding his head energetically and grinning.

They then started making at least ten sandwiches, piling them high on a plate.

After they ate one and drank some milk. Carson said, "Alright, let's go."

Carson and Walter went back up the stairs, heading straight to the room where Bell, Ben and Monty still hid. Somehow, Walter knew they were in there, although Carson was sure he'd never seen them go in there. Carson had only caught a glimpse of Bell's wavy, black hair as she entered the room earlier at the very top of the stairs as he came down. At the time, Carson had no time to call out to her or go see if she was okay. But now, he was worried. Had the rabbits somehow injured her? Was she okay?

The last few feet down the hallway Carson ran, concerned for his sister.

Chapter 22

Chasing After Children

Rosalind chased after the children like a harried nanny, moving between walls with blinding speed, dropping down floors and floating upstairs, working to keep them from getting hurt in her house of horrors. It seemed that Rosalind might have a purpose, her and her one mighty finger.

She followed the black-haired girl into the slug room, trying to keep them away from her. Rosalind only bought her a little time but it helped. Rosalind couldn't save her, too incorporeal for that but she had an index finger and it worked well for her.

Rosalind rushed back into the hallway when Walter grabbed the small boy, again using her one skill, gliding beside Walter and the boy pushing the rabbit's teeth away from Walter's ankles. Rosalind's index finger was proving invaluable where the children were concerned.

She slammed the door on the rabbits when Walter excited the library. _I'm a one-fingered wonder,_ Rosalind thought triumphantly.

But again, she failed to contact anyone. Although, for a brief moment, Rosalind touched Walter and again he noticed it. Walter could feel her finger! And again, a part of her plan began to coalesce into a possible way of contacting her son.

Chapter 23

The Sad Scientist

_Everything changes; it is the nature of the world. No matter how desperately you want the world to stop, to stay for just a moment, for however long that moment of joy or peace might be, you can never keep it. All life is ephemeral; it slips away from you like the days you live, ever forward inching towards an inevitable end._ From the Journal of Rosalind Proctor.

Hector Proctor was a mad scientist, well, angry might be a better word for it. In fact, he was more sad than angry, so .... Hector Proctor was a sad scientist.

Although at the moment, he was furious. Those kids were ruining everything! All his plans, these last few weeks of trying to get things in order were now about to go down in disaster.

For some reason, preserving her things seemed important to him. He'd never understood his mother, an obscure woman who kept all of her thoughts to herself. But she was brilliant too, in that warped perspective she had on the world. He'd always wondered what had made her so?

She had transformed the mansion in the years since he'd last been home. When he'd taken over living in the mansion, he'd found some strange things, like the man-eating plant that he could still hear whine to be fed. (In his mind, Hector saw the plant from "Little Shop of Horrors," saying, "Feed me, Hector.) Others were just strange, like the bees that tickled you instead of stinging. He'd nearly peed his pants the first time they'd stung him. Others were just bizarre and it was these that made Hector often wonder what was going on in his mother's mind to induce her to start them?

Take the trees in the backyard. They were blood-thirsty things, and although Hector wanted to, he still couldn't bring himself to destroy them. The trees were his mother's first experiment. She'd planted them fifty years ago, when she was no more than a young woman, as a possible way to fight Dutch elm disease that somehow went awry. Now they loomed over the backyard, and despite their blood thirstiness, he cherished them--not as much as he cherished Monty and Walter--but enough to remain reluctant about killing them.

And the trees in the backyard frightened Hector, so he had good reason to get rid of them. On his third day home, he'd walked out there and as soon as he'd stepped out of the door, the trees began rustling. At first, Hector took this as the wind, but then, he noticed one uproot itself and begin to lean towards him. He'd read the file--the trees had the ability to subdue a man and then suck the vital nutrients out of his body--and so for his own safety, Hector had rushed back inside. He'd not been back out there since.

But he'd seen them. His mother had altered the trees so much that they only resembled Elms at a distance; up close, you could see the flowing green veins, the green sinew, and the connective muscles beneath their skin-like bark. To him, they reminded him of Ents, those beings out of "Lord of the Rings."

And yet, he still hadn't figure out a way to contain them or change them back into the harmless Elms they were once. He knew that but, to him, they were too precious to kill, and yet too dangerous to keep.

As a compromise, Hector decided to tackle them this winter; as deciduous trees, they went dormant then.

But Hector wasn't a sentimentalist. He didn't have any illusions about his mother's odd proclivities. And yet, the guilt he felt for not being closer to her when she was alive hounded him at these moments. He loved her but he could never tell her so. In a way, saving these experiments was his way of preserving her memory.

He watched on the security camera, as the small group crept up the hallway, and wondered how he could solve this problem and keep everything as it was; they were all he had left now of his mother. Even Monty and Walter had abandoned him.

And that made him furious again.

Chapter 24

The Safety Class

The reunion between the children, Bell, Ben and Carson, wasn't that tense but it had its moments. Bell almost clobbered Walter with a lamp as the little Neanderthal and Carson entered the room. If Monty hadn't pulled it from her hands, she would've brained him. At least, they knocked first.

After their lunch of peanut butter and bananas sandwiches, the group wasted no time formulating a plan. Bell took over and demanded that both Monty and Walter help them rescue their Mom and Dad.

Walter had other plans, well, not plans really, more like he insisted on giving the kids a safety class.

For the next ten minutes, Walter--with Carson translating--informed them of the dangers of every animal, plant and animal-plant in the mansion.

Ben raised his hand. "And these trees will suck your blood?"

"Awk," Walter said.

"Yes," Carson translated. "The trees originally started eating bugs but soon developed a taste for bigger things. They'll suck the blood right out of you."

"Cool!" Ben said. "I can't wait to meet them!"

"If you do," Monty texted him. "I won't be able to save you. I'm allergic to the trees."

Ben nodded. "Then I won't mess with them."

With their class done, Monty still insisted in leading them as they wended their way through the halls towards their parents, with Walter backing him up.

Monty and Walter now slowly crept up the hallway, followed closely by Bell, Ben and Carson.

Monty motioned with his hand that they were close and for them to be quiet. They stopped at the corner.

After a few moments of negotiation, the group decided that Monty would approach the room around the corner, in case there were any surprises. If he deemed it okay, he would motion Walter up. Then the rest could come up when they determined it was safe.

Chapter 25

Run Lyse Run!

Lyse glanced out the door, looking for ... she didn't know what? Trouble, she guessed? Carson had been gone a long time and Lyse had no idea where he might have gone. She'd stood at the entrance of the tunnel calling his name but he'd never answered.

She stood in the door, trying to decide what she should do next, but the pesky Platypus, who wouldn't shut up, made that difficult for her.

She was reluctant to leave her Mom and Dad in the next room. She'd called through the door, and they had answered, but she couldn't figure out a way to get the door open. The thick door held fast, even when she'd put her shoulder to it.

She took the Platypus back into the room and pointed it towards the hold in the wall.

"You need to go through that hole, find my parents and tell them what's going on," she said.

Now, five minutes later, the Platypus hadn't come back either. After he'd went in there, she'd heard a shriek and a yell, so she assumed he'd found them.

He was probably in the other room, discussing things with her parents, or annoying the heck out of them.

She heard something outside. Lyse ran to the door and peeked out, looking again for that undefined danger. Anything was possible in this Fellini-esque place. This crazy place was a veritable mad house, complete with its own crazy people. _Myself included_ , she thought.

The sound grew louder.

When the gorilla shuffle around the corner at the far end of the hallway, Lyse ducked back inside. Hyperventilating--which she thought briefly might be bad for her complexion--she fought for control as her sever state of panic overwhelmed her.

Her fear increasing, in despair, she stared at the hole, hoping someone came through it, still unable to decide what she should do.

She only had two choices: either she had to abandon her parents or fight--neither was a choice. She couldn't fight a gorilla--and that hair, she shuddered. Lord! Way too much hair. She couldn't touch that hair.

"The gorilla's coming down the hallway," Lyse yelled into the hole.

"Run!" said a distant voice out of the hole. It sounded strained like Kris was yelling. "Run! Get out of this house! Don't worry about us. Just run, Lyse!"

Lyse obeyed. At the moment, it sounded like sage advice.

As Lyse stepped out of the door, the gorilla immediately spotted her. It shook its arms and looked as if it was signaling to someone. (Monty was telling Walter to get the other kids as he went after her, to catch her before she hurt herself.)

But Lyse was fast. After all, she was running for her life!

Chapter 26

The Journal

Lyse ran through the third-floor hallways until she came to the un-renovated section of the mansion. There were no security cameras in this part of the house and Hector lost track of her.

When she was certain no one was still after her, she slowed down, gasping for breath. It surprised her when she tried one of the dust-laden doors, and it opened with ease. She walked down the hall and found all of the doors were open.

The rooms she glanced into looked unused for a long time, dusty, with cobwebs hanging from the ceilings. She sneezed a couple of times.

Behind her, Lyse heard an answering sneeze. The gorilla! Searching more quickly, Lyse found a door that looked different--the door looked cleaner, well-used and whereas the knobs on the other rooms were tarnished, this one had a luster to it.

She opened the door and slipped inside, softly closing and locking it.

The large room held a bed, covered in a handmade quilt in odd patterns. To the right side of the bed, sat a nightstand where lay a book with a pair of reading glasses atop it, a pewter, water decanter, a drinking glass, and a lamp with a plain, white shade. In the far corner stood a book case, and when Lyse examined it, she found that all of the books resembled school books, with titles like "Advanced Genetics," and "Procedures in Transfection." She nodded to herself. Yeah, schoolbooks.

In the corner near the bed, stood an IV stand with nothing on it. An ancient carpet lay on the floor, woven in geometric patterns.

Lyse put the book away and turned towards the bed. Just looking at it made her sleepy and she realized for the first time that she was tired. It must have been around midnight by now. And she hadn't taken her nap--well, two naps--today. The bed was neatly-made, and the room, she finally noticed, looked tidy. No cobwebs or dust covered anything as if it were cleaned daily. Someone slept here for sure.

Still worried about her Mom and Dad, Lyse fretted about it for a few moments, her eyebrows knitted together, her brow furrowed, but she couldn't decide what to do. She sat down on the bed; it was comfortable and she yawned as she looked around the room. _Don't go to sleep,_ she thought, although the lure of sleep drew her down towards its pleasurable depths. _I can't!_ she thought.

Lyse stood, went to the nightstand and picked up the book there, thinking it might keep her awake. It turned out to be a notebook, not a real book.

"The Journal of Rosalind Proctor," was written in cursive script across the front of it. Lyse sat down on the bed again, yawned, and began reading some of the journal. She flipped through pages, reading entries.

Thirty minutes later, finished, Lyse stood defiant, armed with the knowledge that the man wasn't dangerous! It came as almost a revelation. She still wasn't sure about his ape and ... hairy midget, Neanderthal brother.

With a shiver, all that hair again, Lyse stood up and left the room.

She walked the hallways, unafraid, looking for the doctor.

Chapter 27

Lyse Meets the Doctor

_There she is!_ Hector thought when the girl came back into his security camera's range.

He left his room, ran up some stairs and as he walked up to her, he said in his best menacing voice. "Ah-hah! I have you now, little missy!" He did his best to give her a menacing glare.

But the girl seemed unaffected by it. "I know," she said. "I know your mother treated you horribly when you were a boy. And yet you still loved her."

Hector wilted a little.

"I know that despite all of that, you are here trying to preserve her legacy, her life's work. And I'm sorry you didn't get to say goodbye to her."

The more she spoke, the more the doctor's shoulders slumped.

He finally shrugged, giving into it. Hector slumped against the wall. "I wanted to be a good son, but she was such a demanding woman. I was never good enough for her."

Lyse slumped down beside him. "I know, and she knew too, but it's okay. No kid lives up to their parent's expectations. They always want us to be better than they are, at everything. At least, you tried."

After sitting there for ten minutes, Hector reached a decision--one he should've made from the start. He shook his head at his foolishness. He stood and offered his hand to the girl. "Come on. Let's get you out of here."

"Not yet. You need to free my parents." Lyse wasn't asking.

"Those two are your parents?"

She nodded. "Why else would I be here?"

Hector shook his head in sorrow. "I don't know. Kids sneak in here all the time, on dares, I'm told. They think the house is haunted or something."

"Oh, that's ridiculous," Lyse said, thinking of the night-gowned woman she'd met in the room.

"Well, no it's not," Hector said. "It is haunted; it's just too big for the ghosts. They get lost in the hallways. This place is like the Winchester mansion."

"You know, I've heard someone else say that," Lyse said. Otherwise, Lyse didn't know what he was talking about but let it go, like she did all things she didn't understand--time usually sorted it out for her. "Have you seen her? Black hair, athletic? Knows it all."

"Oh, her. Yes, I've seen her--she's alright." When Hector went back to check the slug room, the girl had escaped. "And I'm sorry about your parents. I was afraid they were gonna get Monty taken away from me. I just panicked."

"Monty's the gorilla?" Lyse asked.

"Yes," he said.

That surprised Lyse. "How in the world did he get a name like that?"

The Doctor shrugged and said, "My Mama chose it. I wanted to name the Python, Monty."

"That name has a nice ring to it," Lyse said.

"And well, he and Walter were pretty much the only friends I had in the world. And now your brothers and sister have stolen them both from me."

"Well, don't worry, after they get through playing with my brothers, they'll give them back." Lyse was practical about the attention spans of boys; she was dating after all. With a frown, since she still didn't like the idea, she said, "If he won't attack us, then let's go find him. And if he's truly your friend, he'll forgive you."

As they stood to go, Monty shambled around the corner. He walked up, looking unsurely between the doctor and the yellow-haired girl.

"Monty meet Lyse," the doctor said with an expansive sweep of his hand.

"Pleased to meet you," Lyse said, her voice betraying her nervousness. They shook hands--Monty's grip was weak.

Chapter 28

Reunited

Those we love may madden us, may challenge us, may disenchant us, but we should never give up on them. By our striving we force love to take root in the cracks of those damaged hearts. It may be mixed with an odd blend of annoyance and disappointment but still love takes many forms.

_Accepting these forms for what they are or rejecting them altogether is a choice we make. But rejecting them would be a mistake because where love takes root, it gives happiness a chance to grow, maybe an annoying, troublesome happiness but happiness nonetheless, and these things we cherish as time passes._ From Rosalind Proctor's Journal.

When Lyse reached the room, she found the door torn off its hinges. Inside, as she entered, a group of people stood in the middle of the room talking. Her Mom and Dad were still in the cage, as was Carson.

"How did you get in there?" Lyse asked him.

Ben said, "When Carson saw them, he screamed, 'Mom! Dad!' And ran right through the bars."

Hovering at the door, Hector told Monty, "Go prepare something for breakfast. Fruit or something. Take it to the dining room on a cart. Then go round up some gear for those rabbits."

Monty nodded. He walked away; he was hungry so he believed the others would be hungry too. But after this was over, he was going to have a long talk with Hector.

"Lyse!" Carson said. He squeezed through the bars, ran to her. He slammed into her legs, and hugged her desperately.

"I'm okay, Carson," she said, laughing.

Her Mom, her arms through the bars of the cage, one hand on Ben and Bell's shoulders, said, "It's good to see you're safe. We were worried."

The doctor walked into the room, stepped sheepishly forward and extended his hand to Kris. "I'm Doctor Hector Proctor. And I'm so sorry for what I did."

Kris scowled at the man and didn't shake his hand. "I ought to have you thrown in jail!"

"And you would have every right to do so," the doctor said, contrite.

Walter said, "Awk, awk, awk."

The entire group looked confused. No one, not even the doctor, understood a word Walter said.

Until Carson spoke up. "He said, the doctor knows he's wrong. He knew it the moment he abducted ya'll, but his fear of losing everything was far greater at the time than his fear of reprisal. Everything that represented his mother's work was in this house and anything that threatened that--and by extension her memory--caused him great concern, and so strong was his desire to preserve those memories that he couldn't stop himself."

Finished, everyone stared at Carson with confused looks on their faces. His Mom said, "Articulate, isn't he?" She looked from Walter to Carson, and nobody knew who she was really talking about.

"I don't understand how the boy understands him. Walter has always talked like that, for as long I can remember," the doctor said.

Lyse said, "It's probably because Carson talks in grunts sometimes." She grinned.

"Lyse," her mother chastised.

"I do?" Carson said.

"Yes." Lyse said and began a parody of him. "Carson, it's time to eat--unk! Carson it's time to go to bed--unk! It's unk this, unk that with you, especially when you're playing Shadow Warriors." She laughed and then said, "Unk, unh."

"But really, I think he talks like that because he's a clone of a Neanderthal," Lyse said. "And some vital genetic part wasn't trans-something to him. It also made him short." Lyse hadn't understood the technical jargon in Rosalind Proctor's journal.

"How do you know that?" Hector said, threateningly, but Kris laid his hand on the man's shoulder and gently tugged him towards the cage.

The doctor shrugged. "Sorry, my mother's work is a button for me."

"Well, push your I'm-a-nice-person button, okay?"

Hector nodded and shut up. He might be in a lot of trouble but he'd resigned himself to facing it, good or bad.

Lyse turned to the doctor, and went on. "I read your mother's journal. You should too, it's enlightening."

Carson asked, "What's a Neanderthal?"

"It's a cave man. A real one," Bell said.

Spanky waddled up to the group and said to Lyse, "Hey, ssppl--sister, we had a deal. You can't go back on that now."

And since everyone was now used to some animal talking, no one reacted too severely.

Carson went to pick him up but Bell yelled," Don't!" She stepped forward and pushed him away from the animal.

When Carson looked at her, she explained, "They have poisonous claws on their ankles."

"How do you know that?" Lyse said.

"I read it in a book once," Bell said.

"Don't you get on the internet like a normal kid?" Ben said.

"Sometimes."

"He's okay, Bell," Carson said. "He's my friend."

"Hey, ssppl-sister, can you help a Platypus out here," Spanky said to Bell, she was the nearest person to him.

"He's okay?" Bell asked Carson, who nodded. Bell gingerly picked Spanky up, telling him, "You behave."

"No problem. Do you think you can ssppl--scratch me between the ssppl--shoulder blades--I can never reach that ssppl--spot."

Obliging him, Bell placed him on a nearby table. Spanky lay there like a flat, hairy stone. She began scratching his back.

"Oh, man. That hit's the ssppl--spot. I think I'll keep you." His tail began slapping the table in a rhythmic sequence. "Oh, yeah, ssppl--sister. You're making me ssppl--slap happy."

"I don't even want to know," Bell said, still scratching the Platypus. _We're gonna keep this guy,_ she thought.

When she finished, Bell said. "Okay, enough of this negative movement." She was eager to get home now.

"Negative what?" Lyse asked her.

"Movement?"

"Say what you mean," Lyse said.

Bell shrugged. "Okay, I mean stop standing around here doing nothing."

"See? Was that so hard?"

"You have no idea." Bell said, laughing at her sister.

Ten minutes later, after the doctor unlocked the cage and freed Kris and Chrissy Wildermuss, the group filed out of the room and down the hallway, towards the breakfast the doctor offered to provide for them.

At that moment, the doctor received a text from Monty. The rabbits were about to escape from the library down stairs. If they didn't hurry, they would get loose. "Excuse me, I have to go. I'll be right back." He jogged down the hallway.

"Hey! How do we get out of here?" Kris yelled at him. Walter, the little guy, had already moved down the hallway towards breakfast.

Despite all of the doctor's desire to save everything he could of his mother's legacy, that didn't mean he wouldn't try to keep the Wildermuss clan from running into trouble, especially now that he had made amends.

"Straight and right and you'll hit the stairs." the doctor yelled back. "When you get to the bottom, don't go left! That takes you out the back way and, trust me, you don't want to go into the backyard," he warned further and disappeared around the corner.

Chapter 29

The Gnawing Problem

While in the library, the rattle rabbits finally gnawed through the door. They ambled out into the foyer of the house. With a wild look in their eyes, they took off at a dead run, searching for something to just, well, kill.

Chapter 30

The Looming Giants

_Only love can slay a looming giant, and even then, it's difficult. Unlike David, most of us are on our own._ From the Journal of Rosalind Proctor.

As the Wildermuss family walked down the hallway, Kris was still a little peeved and it took Lyse almost two flights of stairs to convince him that the doctor shouldn't be thrown in jail. She described their situation as an adventure.

Her Mom took a little longer to convince. "That idiot about near got us killed!"

"Really Mom?" Bell said. "At no time--besides those crazy rabbits and those crazy slugs--were we in any danger."

They reached the door to the stairs.

"Well, how many times do you need to be in danger before it's not okay?" Her mother snapped back.

"More than that," Bell replied. They were arguing as they walked down the stairs. Left to their own devices and flawed navigating skills, the group was more involved in solving their problems with the house's inhabitants than where they were going.

"One's enough," their Mom said. "Two's too many!"

"Just let it go. Nobody got hurt and the doctor apologized," Kris said. He was tired and just wanted to go home and watch TV.

"Aren't we supposed to forgive him?" Lyse said.

Ben said to Lyse, thinking about forgiveness, "Hey. Why can't you forgive me of anything?"

Lyse said, "Cause you're my brother and I get to torture you until I go to college."

Ben said, "Well then, that'll be forever." But he smiled at her. "Besides," he said to his Dad. "I made a new friend."

"And I got a new pet," Carson added

"I'm not your ssppl-pet," Spanky added.

"Friend then?"

"That's ssppl-better."

"I don't know," Chrissy said. But they could tell by the tone of her voice that they were wearing down her resolve.

At the end of the bottom of the stairs, she said, "Okay, but we help him get rid of these ... problems." For some reason she was reluctant to call the helpless victims of Rosalind Proctor's experiments, animals.

Everyone agreed with her. Some of the doctor's experiments went beyond interesting--especially to Bell. And Ben looked forward to seeing Monty again.

They turned left, walked down a hallway towards a door at the end of it.

They went through the door, still discussing their situation.

Outside, the Wildermusses realized their mistake immediately. There were in the backyard.

Kris turned and grabbed the doorknob, shook it but it didn't budge. "It's locked," he said, still shaking it in frustration.

And the trees, like the patient traps they were, began to uproot themselves and move towards the family in anticipation of their next meal.

Chapter 31

Dad Saves the Day, Sort of Not

_Hope is a cruel thing when it runs out--but it can also be motivating_. From the Journal of Rosalind Proctor.

In Hazmat gear and carrying gas guns full of knock-out gas, Monty and the doctor walked down the hallway. At the head of the stairs, they braced for trouble, prepared to gas all of the rabbits if their situation required it. The doctor held a long pole with a pool net at the end. It was the best they could do on short notice.

Monty went first down the stairs, coming out at the door to the library. When he glanced inside, he found it empty.

"They got out!" the doctor said through the mask, his voice muted by the material. "What should we do next?" Hector had no practical experience wrangling deadly rabbits.

Monty couldn't text in the gear, so he shrugged instead.

"Go back to the security room and find them!" Hector ordered.

Monty scowled. They had talked on the way here about how Hector treated him.

Seeing this, Hector added, "Oh, okay. Will you, please?"

Monty smiled and ran off. It took him ten minutes to get there.

In the back yard, the Wildermusses heard someone stalking them. The bushes were moving and the family huddled close together, walking slowly, looking for an exit from the large, confusing place.

Once inside the security room, Monty texted Hector the rabbit's location. They were in the next hallway over from where the doctor now stood. As he watched the cameras, Monty saw a flash of something in the backyard. The trees were moving? Why?

He panned the camera around, switching cameras and finally he found the Wildermusses. They were right in the middle of the garden. And from the look of it, the trees had them surrounded.

Outside in the garden, the entire family fended off the limbs that were slowly reaching down towards them. But there was so many of them. A limb grabbed Carson's arm. He screamed and beat on it but the limb had a steady grip on him. The tree started dragging Carson towards it.

Kris jumped to his son's rescue but a limb grabbed his leg. Then another grabbed his arm.

When Monty realized the Wildermuss family's mistake, his first thought was Ben! And as much as he hated going into the backyard, since he was allergic to the Elm trees, he never hesitated to act.

He texted the doctor about it and then Walter, who was better equipped to combat the rabbits anyway. Besides, once the gas hit them, they'd dropped like rocks.

He went rushing down the hallway. Halfway there, he had an idea.

The trees had everyone, Lyse, Bell, Ben, Carson and their Mom and Dad--even Spanky--wrapped up in branches, stretched tight and ready for lunch.

Alive and green, mainly from a steady diet of rodents and bugs that entered the garden, the trees prepared to feast.

Ben said, "So what do we do against a blood sucking, walking forest?"

Bell racked her noggin, trying to figure a way out but came up short. Bell said. "If I'd only known earlier, I might have had a solution."

Sarcastically, Lyse said, "What? You haven't read a book on this too?"

"Shush children. This is serious," their Mom said. Her arms were aching from being stretched into the air. "This is really serious. And too weird."

Bell starting yelling," Help!" Then all of them started yelling.

Monty ran down the stairs and into the hallway where Hector and Walter were wrangling the rabbits.

He grabbed Hector, pushed him into a room and slammed the door. "Ahk, ahk, ahk," he said to Walter, who was the only one who understood Monty.

Walter nodded.

Turning far faster than the rabbits could respond, Monty and Walter shuffled down the hallways in a lively lope. Cutting turns on the slick, wood floors by grabbing the corners in their powerful grips, they tripped up the rattle rabbits, causing them to slide around the curves and collide into each other and the walls, slowing them down. The two had maybe a fifty-foot lead on the rabbits.

Monty burst through the exit door. Right behind him, Walter rolled right into the back garden. He kept running.

And all forty of the rabbits followed right behind them.

As Monty went through the door, he clung to the backside of it. He jumped, kicked the door closed as he did, and then climbed up to the second story. He surveyed the area, found the Wildermusses and then leapt into a tree.

The rabbits raced into the garden.

Up in the trees, and guided by his allergy, Monty swung limb to limb, until he found the group of people suspended in mid-air.

Walter, on the other hand, led the rabbits straight to where the Wildermusses were bundled up.

Somehow, Ben managed to get his hand free, or loose enough to pull at some of the branches encircling Spanky's front leg.

"Ssppl-thanks!" Spanky sputtered.

"Bite it!" Ben said.

The platypus begins gnawing into the branches. "I have no teeth!" Spanky cried. His duck bill was of no help to them.

Sweating, Ben tried to wipe his face but a limb grabbed his arm and stretched him taut again. Kris and Chrissy Wildermuss both were now struggling with the limbs, desperate to free themselves.

"Ouch!" Ben cried when a branch dug into his skin. "Oh, God, it's sucking me dry!" he screamed.

The rattle rabbits fanned out into the garden, following Walter, looking for prey, or anything really, to kill. They didn't see the family strung up ten feet in the air, partly hidden by leaves. Occasionally, a tree would lash out and snatch up a rabbit, but there weren't that many trees. The Wildermusses watched as tree after tree snatched up the easy pickings of the struggling rabbits, buying them time.

The rabbits, sensing finally the greater danger represented by the trees, evacuated the area with Walter right behind them.

Monty sneezed again; his eyes blurred and his nose was running terribly from his allergy, but the certain death the trees represented never slowed him down. He dodged another limb, swinging through the regular trees. But he couldn't find the Wildermusses.

"Monty!" Ben said when he saw him.

"Excuse me, Mr. Spanky?" Bell said.

The platypus looked at her. "What? I'm trying to ssppl--save you here."

"I know that and I also know that you have poisonous claws on your hind legs." She rolled her eyes and her head, trying to insinuate what she was trying to tell him.

"Just tell him," Lyse said in frustration. "It ain't like the trees have ears."

"Don't say ain't," her Mom screamed. She was freaking out now and trying to hold onto her sanity. Acting normally was her response to the fantastic, it seemed.

"Ow," Lyse cried. "The tree just bit me!"

Fortunately, the Platypus finally understood. "Oh," it said. But a limb held its back leg--and then it didn't.

Spanky drew out his claws and sliced at the tree. The poison seemed to work, since the tree limb freed him. Another slice dropped Carson to the ground. Spanky climbed across the Wildermusses, scrambling over the tree limbs reaching for him as he moved, slashing and making the trees recoil from the poison in his claws. It didn't take long before Spanky had the entire family free.

"Let's get out of here," Kris said, protectively rounding up his family and pushing them forward, although he didn't know where they needed to go.

"There's a gate!" Ben said, pointing. There were heading for it when Monty jumped down out of a tree and burst through the greenery.

Ben said, "Stay away from him, Dad he's--!"

"Be quiet!" Kris said as he stepped forward. "Run! I'll hold him off as long as I can!" No one had had time to explain the gorilla to their Dad.

Monty looked at him, thinking, _this man is crazy._

"No!" Chrissy yelled. She stepped up with him. The gorilla shuffled forward, breathing heavily.

"No!" Ben yelled, but his Dad was already moving forward to combat the beast.

Ben ran forward; his Dad stood braced in front of the beast, his fists up for a fight, although Kris had no idea how to fight a gorilla.

Monty drew in a deep breath and roared!

Monty's sneeze covered Kris in an eruption of pure mucus.

The expulsion hit Kris's face, blinding him, it hit his chest and parts of his back--it was so sticky that it curved around Kris's shoulders.

"He's allergic to the trees, Dad," Ben said, running up. "But he's not dangerous."

Covered in gorilla snot, Kris stopped. He wiped his face until he could see again, but he was still covered.

Ben said, "I told you to stay away from him."

"Yeah, well, you should've added the part about the gorilla being a friendly and having a cold," Kris said, wiping his face but the stuff was thick--and abundant.

Chapter 32

Sighting a Ghost

_In life, hindsight is twenty-twenty, but in death, it is everything._ From the Journal of Rosalind Proctor.

Outside the garden gate, the family milled around, letting the excitement from the last few hours dissipate. Kris was still attempting to remove snot from his body. Chrissy took one look at it and waived off helping. "I'm not touching that stuff," she said.

Monty was texting to Ben.

"Really?" Ben said. He looked up in shock at the gorilla.

Monty nodded. "The doctor said he would get me home."

"That's great!" Ben said, and then a look of sadness came over him. "For you, well, it's great."

"That's a part of life, Ben," Monty texted. "We have to make choices. There's things I'm gonna miss too."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna miss you, my friend."

At this, Ben smiled, and seemed to accept it. "Me too, my friend."

"And I'm gonna miss hip hop," Monty texted. "And my Facebook page, but maybe I'll figure out a way to keep in touch through that. And I'll Skype with you when I can. And you can read my blog."

"You have a blog?"

"Oh, yes!" Monty texted. "And I own two or three online businesses."

When Ben frowned at him, Monty texted, "Hey, I had access to a computer. You didn't think I was sitting around moping about my life, did you? That's no way to live."

Recovering from his sadness, Ben grinned. "Yeah, go out and live it!"

He high-fived Monty.

The doctor finally arrived still in Hazmat gear, and with Walter's help, they rounded up the rabbits, what was left of them, maybe ten or fifteen. In the Elm trees, rabbits wiggled and tried to get free. One bit into a limb and dropped down. The doctor pounced on it and gassed it. The rabbit went instantly asleep.

Lyse stopped cold, she gasped. "There she is!" she yelled. The woman stood there, beseeching her in washed-out Technicolor.

The lady walked up to Walter and began touching his hand, but apparently only visible to Lyse.

"Who?" Kris said. He looked at his daughter as if she'd lost her mind. Her mother grabbed her and pulled her close.

"Rosalind. The ghost that lives here!"

Ben walked past Walter, still looking at his hairy palm. "Deal with it bud. You're hairy."

Hector walked up and asked Lyse. "What do you see?" He asked this slowly, reverently.

"I think you need to ask--" Lyse shivered. He was too hairy. "Walter that."

And so Hector did.

Chapter 33

The Love Plan

_Love has a way of making things possible_ , Rosalind Proctor thought. That her death revealed this seemed another tragedy in a long life of tragedies. The simple act of loving someone in your own way, without strings, required a patience that she never knew she didn't possess ... until Rosalind saw the family together.

They squabbled, they fought, and sometimes did mean things to each other, but underneath their human foibles Rosalind saw a foundation built on love.

It made her realize that Hector--and Walter and Monty as well--had lost this. Another skill their inept mother never taught them.

Rosalind had finally figured that out from watching the children and her admiration for them grew. So, you can imagine her horror when they exited the house into the garden.

Rosalind followed the family out into the garden, trying to will them in another direction. She tapped the father, the mother on the shoulder but they failed to notice it. In Rosalind's panic, her finger would not solidify, it seemed.

And the trees had them before the family realized they'd been taken. Rosalind should've killed those trees years ago but she and Javier had planted them together, back in the full hubris of their youths and though dangerous, in Rosalind's lifelong love affair with her grief, she lacked the strength to rid the world of these mistakes of her heart.

The trees had them now and there seemed no way Rosalind could save them.

And she needed to save such innocents; her desire intense now to save all of them.

Panicked, Rosalind floated up into the trees and tried pushing on the limbs but to no avail.

The youngest girl's lips moved and Rosalind could follow what she said for once. Of course! Rosalind pulled the limb away, her wonder finger again, and then, slashed it with Spanky's claw. (Who named him Spanky was a mystery even to Rosalind.)

Dutch elm disease is a parasite; it starves a tree to death. But it is delivered by beetles. Back then, Rosalind had surmised that if you eradicated the beetle, you eradicated the disease. So working under that theory, she had transduced the genes from a touch-me-not and a water wheel plant into the Elms, then boosted the trees structural system with a few animal traits (Rosalind would have to look at her notes to remember just exactly what she did back then.) to make it bulkier in the slim hope of increasing their mobility, so that they might eat the beetles before they transferred the fungus. They could support movement with this boosted system--Rosalind have no idea where they developed their taste for blood--another side effect of gene manipulation, she guessed. Sometimes the side effects just turned out bizarre, but the trees had survived for forty years. And they had grown hungry too.

But the Platypi's claw was painful to humans and animals, and the trees had just enough animal DNA for it to work.

Rosalind slashed away and Spanky--goodness how that name galled her--did the rest.

Rosalind was especially frantic to save the blond girl; she held crucial information and all was lost if Rosalind didn't save her. Rosalind believed it was these strong emotions at the crucial moment that allowed the girl the ability to see beyond the barrier between them. Otherwise, Rosalind had no explanation for it.

"I see the woman!" the blond girl mouthed. Her wonderful, wonderful finger pointed straight at Rosalind.

"Rosalind," the girl mouthed.

And the last of Rosalind's happenstance plan fell into place when Walter showed up just as the girl said Rosalind's name.

While they stood at the gate, Rosalind started touching Walter's palm. Tap-tap, tap-tap.

And when he looked down at it, she slowly spelled her name in his hand.

Once, twice, three times, she wrote, "It's me Walter. Rosalind." She saw the light dawn in Walter's eyes. "I love you, Walter," Rosalind spelled next. Tears came to his eyes.

Love, impossibilities' workhorse, saved her. Walter's love for her, her love for him. And now, that feeling Rosalind had so long denied herself spilled out in an eruption of emotions. Will alone, saved her from wailing again like a ghost. And that feeling of what she had lost so urged her to wail.

"Tell Hector," Rosalind wrote next. And Walter, a look of such joy on his face that she could not believe it at first, complied. Walter, Monty and--Rosalind hoped--her son all loved her, when she had thought herself alone in this world. _Will wonders never cease_ , she thought and Rosalind believed now they would not.

Chapter 34

Change the World

In the den of the mansion, Carson said to Walter, "You wanna play?" Carson had come along with Bell so that he could play with Walter.

Walter said, "Awk." *

*Translation of Walter's words: "You do know I'm a grown man, don't you?"

"Yeah," Carson said. "But does that mean you don't like to play?"

"Awk, awk," Walter said. *

*Translation of Walter's words; "Oh, no I love to play--except dolls."

"Well, that's okay then. I didn't bring any dolls. I brought my action figures!"

Walter shrugged and they went to play.

"Stay on the first floor," Kris called after them. "And don't go into the garden," he said, although he knew the garden safe now that the doctor had uprooted the Elms and used them to renovate the house. Well, he'd herded them towards a chainsaw. Kris had been glad to help him but, in the week since they'd started, Kris sometimes got a sneaking impression that the walls were breathing, although he hadn't caught them at any mischief yet ... yet.

On the second floor, Bell, Monty and Hector were putting the finishing touches on his machine.

"Ready?" Hector said to them. The rest of the family was down in the den, doing whatever. Waiting on them to finish, really, since no one but Bell, the girl, had any idea what Hector was attempting.

He winked at the keen-minded girl. "When we go downstairs, tell them you learned this from a book."

He motioned towards one button amid an array of machines in the room. "You may have the honors," he told the girl.

Clapping her hands and grinning, Bell pushed the button. And her whole world changed the moment the machine came alive.

Chapter 35

A Universe Opens Up

Through Walter, Rosalind spoke to her son. Of course, the smallest boy, Carson, had to translate for Walter, since no one understood what he was saying. But eventually, despite the game of telephone, the old woman managed to inform Hector of what he needed to do.

It took Hector several days, working on the components of his universe device to set up the right frequency to contact his mother. He even let Monty, and Bell, the girl, who loved science almost as much as Hector, help him.

Finally, the day arrived and with their hearts (Well, for Rosalind, some of those helium atoms felt excited.) in their throats, Bell pressed a button and without the merest noise in the room, Rosalind Proctor appeared to them. She knew this from their thoughts and by the look of awe on their faces.

Hector walked up to the barrier; like his mother, he could not cross it. As Rosalind stared face to face with her son, she wanted so much to hug him. But all they could do was stand there and mouth "I love you," to each other.

That's when something amazing happened. Monty took his I-phone and hurled it towards the barrier. Rosalind thought he had gone mad for a moment and ducked away in surprise from the projectile. But when nothing happened, she removed her hand from her face and there, on the ground, lay the phone.

The device had sailed clean through. So, her theory was off; the barrier was thin here and with an excess of energy, some things could penetrate it. Perhaps the universe device weakened or thinned out the distance between them? But Monty's action had started something that Rosalind couldn't explain but felt nonetheless.

She quickly picked up the phone and typed," Son, I need to tell you something ...." She had to stop, crying now, feeling as if she were beginning to expand, to loosen, as if those excited helium molecules were beginning to vibrate and move farther apart from each other.

"But I have so many questions," Hector typed furiously, misspelling words. To Rosalind it came out: But I have no money questions. But she knew.

She looked up at her son, typing the story of his father, telling the truth as she stared at him. That part of her, beginning to fly apart, the colors dimming even more.

"I don't have much time," Rosalind typed and sent Hector her confession.

"No, Mama, wait!" came his text.

"No, son," she typed. "He's waited long enough."

Hector stared at her, tears in his eyes as her loosening completed and she....

###

Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won't you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailor?

Thank you,

Papa

Coming Soon:

If you enjoyed this book, then you're gonna love book two. In a few short months, the next exciting edition to the Wildermuss family's chronicles, "The Crimson Tide Pool of Death," will be available. I promise you it is better than the one you just read.
