Tales From Beyond the Brain Page 4

But it was. And enough with this Alice business. Gilbert was her real name.

  His name.

  It was the brain, Alice realized. You’re touching the brain, and the brain is sharing its own thoughts with you. And its memories. Brains shouldn’t be able to do that. They’re not living things. They need human bodies. Without a body, a brain is just a piece of meat.

  Alice breathed in and out heavily. Sweat beaded on her forehead and clung to her skin, making her shirt stick to her back.

  But she kept her hand firmly on the brain, because wasn’t that what the brain wanted her to do? She felt it throb against her wet palm. Its pulsing matched her own, and other memories bubbled in her thoughts.

  His name was Gilbert. Gilbert A. Curry. Images came with the name. Of a boy growing up into a man, studying hard. Always studying. Always working. Learning the big words in math and science books.

  Neurosurgery—the cutting and fixing of the brain. That was Gilbert’s job.

  Another image. It felt like a memory, but Alice wasn’t sure whose.

  The image was of a house. It was a house on a street she passed every day on her way home from school.

  It was the house on the street where she’d found the brain.

  Alice looked up.

  She’d been walking without paying attention, but now she stopped. She pulled her hand away from the brain and rubbed her fingers. They were slick with sweat and the fluid that oozed from the gray organ.

  She stared at the house and shivered.

  It wasn’t a particularly scary house. It looked like all the others in the neighborhood, with a tree in the yard in front of it. The grass was green, and there were flowers in a patch of earth beside the porch. It was a normal, everyday house, nestled among lots of other normal, everyday houses. And that’s what made Alice shiver.

  Alice didn’t think twice about stepping off the sidewalk and walking up the path to the front porch.

  She remembered this house as if it were her own. She knew that the front-door key was under the potted plant to the left of the front door. Sure enough, she lifted the plant and there it was. Exactly where Gilbert had always left it.

  Alice twirled the key in her hand, because that’s what Gilbert liked to do. Then she pushed it into the keyhole and opened the door.

  Stepping inside, she found the house exactly as she’d left it.

  No! her brain screamed. You’ve never been here before! Get out! Get out while you can!

  Alice reached into the backpack, placed her hand on the brain, felt it pulse and felt the screaming in her own head disappear. Yes, she decided. The house was exactly as it had been left before.

  She strode through the front hallway. The kitchen was still in order, and those dishes that had been left in the sink still needed cleaning. Then again, there were always dishes in the sink that needed cleaning. Gilbert was not one to tidy up right away.

  But it was not the kitchen she was interested in.

  Alice strode over to the door next to the kitchen and opened it. She looked down into a shaft of darkness, then reached over and flipped on a light.

  A carpeted stairwell led to the basement.

  Down she went. The basement was anything but creepy. There was carpeting, the walls were painted bright yellow, and pictures hung on the walls. One picture in particular interested Alice. It was a large, framed photograph of an old man with a wild shock of hair and a thick mustache. The word below it proclaimed: EINSTEIN.

  Albert Einstein. Alice nodded. She didn’t need anyone else’s memories to explain who he was. The famous scientist who had come up with his own equation: E = mc2.

  Equations like that had never made much sense to Alice, but now that she had her hand on the brain, energy equaling mass times the speed of light made perfect, plain old sense.

  Still, the image itself did not interest Alice.

  Her interest lay in what was hidden behind it.

  Alice felt behind the large frame. There was a small gap in the wall. She got up on her tippy-toes, squeezed her fingers into the space, felt the latch and flipped it.

  Then Alice stood back as the framed picture slid aside as if on a set of rollers. The picture was now hanging a couple of feet to the left. In its place was an open doorway.

  Get out of here now.

  Alice put her hand back into the bag and massaged the brain. It was running low on fluid, she determined. But the solution was just a few steps away.

  She hunched and stepped through the doorway.

  Alice found herself in another room. Unlike the rest of the basement, this room was not carpeted. The floor was bare stone. A string of fluorescent bulbs flickered on above her, revealing metal shelves lining the walls. The shelves were full of various pieces of medical equipment, electronics and jars full of thick fluid and various human organs.

  Brains, Alice noted. Brains in jars, just as Gilbert had left them.

  Taking up the center of the room were what appeared to be two metal beds. Surrounding them were several stools, as well as carts loaded with other scientific apparatuses. Alice spied many sharp implements—saw blades, scalpels, knives. The metal gleamed under the lights.

  It was a surgical station. Beneath it, on the cold stone floor, was a drain. Alice didn’t need to run her finger along the edge of the drainpipe to know what she’d find there. Blood. A few dark pools on the floor revealed that the table had been used recently.

  The memory flashed again. Alice—or was it Gilbert?—on the table, looking up at the faces under the white surgical masks and at the shining metal scalpels they held with precision.

  Shaking off the memory, Alice looked over at one of the shelves and spied rows of vials full of a greenish fluid. The serum Gilbert had been looking for.

  Alice strode over to the shelf, pulled out a vial and opened it. Then, after taking a sniff of the liquid to make sure it hadn’t gone bad, she poured it over the brain in her pack.

  The brain pulsed and squelched, sucking up the fluid.

  Alice let out a sigh, as if she’d just guzzled down a glass of water on a scorching summer afternoon.

  She now understood the importance of the serum. Gilbert had planned to introduce it into the local water supply. He’d had no time to turn the serum over to the Food and Drug Administration for review. They would want to test it. Some fearful scientists might not approve of his methods. But Gilbert was certain that the serum, if properly introduced, would change people’s minds and the way they thought.

  It would be a new scientific world. Everyone would have the opportunity to be a genius. A single dose of the serum would improve brain function dramatically.

  But there’d been a hiccup in the plan.

  Gilbert had had assistants, of course. But somewhere along the line, his helpers had turned as fearful of his ideas as the watchdogs in the drug administration. They’d reached a point where they no longer trusted Gilbert A. Curry.

  Undoubtedly a genius, he was, nonetheless, too dangerous, they thought. So his followers decided to remove his brain from his body. They would stop Gilbert’s maniacal plan while keeping his brain intact to preserve and learn from it.

  Fools! They didn’t know that Gilbert had already dosed himself with the serum. That the serum could keep the brain alive even after the body was taken care of. That Gilbert had taken so much of the serum, in fact, that he could also control other people’s thoughts.

  If an unwitting human placed their hands on the brain, or even stood close to it, Gilbert could exude his own will onto them. Of course, he’d taken enough of the serum to be able to do this, but other people wouldn’t be allowed access to such a high concentration. It wouldn’t do to give others the same power.

  Gilbert had needed the power. Otherwise, those “helpers” of his might have taken control of his brain.

  Still, his helpers had not been imbeciles. They were geniuses in their own right, and forcing them to bend to Gilbert’s will had been no easy trick. There had been only enough time for Gil
bert to suggest that they gently place his brain by the curb, away from the roar of traffic, before he erased their memories.

  He’d been at the mercy of the elements then. Getting left on the curb wasn’t ideal. Not good or safe. Animals might have pecked or nibbled at what was left of him, but he could keep them at bay for a short while. They were the easiest to control—the ants and flies and birds that would have otherwise devoured him.

  He’d known it would only be a matter of time before someone found his brain just lying there—

  Alice, you’ve got to get out of here.

  Alice shook the words away as Gilbert’s thoughts filled her own.

  Only a matter of time, Gilbert determined, before someone found it, took it and nursed the brain back to health.

  Oh, Gilbert would still need a body to complete his work. Any body would do.

  The problem now was that there were two brains and only one Alice.

  Alice, if you know what’s good for you, you must go now. Back up the steps—

  Alice stared at the metal tables, at the surgical equipment, and remembered. This kind of equipment was as easy to use as tying a pair of shoelaces.

  Alice, please! Listen to yourself! Do you know what he intends to do to you?

  Alice smiled.

  Two brains, but only one Alice? That was no problem at all.

  SCRATCH

  Avi figured he was a good enough artist that it was fine for him to scribble wherever and whenever he wanted. His sketch notebook was just the start. He doodled on desks or inside of textbooks when Ms. Fetch wasn’t looking. Eventually he got daring enough to snatch one of the dry-erase markers and draw a picture of her oversized rear end on the whiteboard while her back was turned. He made sure to include stink lines coming out of her butt.

  The gales of laughter he received were worth the phone call home and the detention he received the next day.

  Avi’s school was originally one of those one-room schoolhouses from pioneer days. You know, back when they crammed twenty kids from every grade into one room and had some old lady try to teach them all. Ms. Fetch looked like she was old enough to have been around since then.

  The new school had been built up around the old schoolhouse, which was now used as the caretaker’s storage area.

  And the detention room.

  Who even used a detention room these days? Wasn’t that just for grumpy principals in those high-school movies from the 1980s?

  That’s what Avi was thinking as Ms. Fetch led him down the hall to the door with a sign that said DETENTION ROOM. The door had to be at least hundred years old, all scratched up with what appeared to be nail marks.

  Ms. Fetch pulled out a thin key that looked like it should have opened a haunted house. She eased it into the keyhole, and Avi heard a heavy click. The door creaked open, scraping against a cold stone floor. Ms. Fetch flipped on the lights.

  The detention room had been partitioned off and was no bigger than a large closet. There was space for a couple of chairs, a desk and a blackboard. Not a whiteboard, like in the new part of the school, but an old blackboard that you could only write on with chalk. The board had been wiped clean, but Avi could still see traces of writing on it. It looked like whoever had been here before had been writing lines over and over.

  Avi followed Ms. Fetch inside and looked around. “So what am I supposed to do? Sit with my head on the desk?”

  Ms. Fetch fished a piece of chalk from the ledge under the blackboard. Avi noticed that the ledge was full of dust, but there was only this one piece of chalk. It was small, about the size of a thimble. She handed it to him. “You draw.”

  Avi looked at her, confused.

  “You heard what I said. You wanted to be an artist, so here’s your chance. Draw.” There was nothing inviting in the way she said it. She sat down in the second chair and waited.

  Avi had no idea what to put on the board, so he wrote the letters of his name.

  “No, not that.”

  “Oh.” Avi thought for a moment and then wrote the words I’M SORRY.

  Before he could even turn around to face Ms. Fetch, she stood up. “That’s not what you were drawing in my classroom, was it?”

  Avi didn’t say anything.

  “Was it?”

  Avi shook his head.

  “What did you draw in my classroom?”

  “A picture.”

  “A picture,” Ms. Fetch repeated, “of me.”

  Avi nodded. So this was where she was going. Avi figured he had to play it like he actually was sorry. “I’m sorry, Ms. Fetch. I’m really, really sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  Ms. Fetch smiled and shook her head. “Now, we both know that’s not true.”

  “It is true. I promise. I won’t draw it again. I swear!”

  “But that’s just it, Avi. You’re going to draw it again. Right now. For me.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I am going to sit down, and you are going to draw that same picture of me. Right now.”

  Then Ms. Fetch sat back down in her chair, crossed her legs, folded her arms across her chest and waited some more.

  Avi pinched the nub of chalk between his fingers. His hand trembled. His whole body was shaking. He didn’t know why. He turned to the board and drew the picture as best as he could remember. He formed the outline of the body and—

  “No, that’s not it. You made my rear end much bigger.”

  Avi wiped away the line he’d drawn and made it bigger, rounder. But his hand was shaking so much now that the edges were wobbly.

  “There you go. Just like that,” Ms. Fetch said with a grin. She leaned forward so her enormous behind lifted away from the chair. “But you aren’t finished yet. You forgot the best part.”

  Avi stared at her.

  “The little wiggly lines coming from all around my body. You know, as if I stink.”

  “No, Ms. Fetch. You don’t stink. I mean, you—”

  “Do it.”

  Avi swallowed again, but his mouth was so parched it felt like his tongue was about to crack. He drew the stink lines. When the picture was all done, Avi stood back and looked at his handiwork. He got it. It wasn’t funny to make pictures like that.

  Ms. Fetch stood up and strode over to stand right beside Avi. She didn’t even look at him. She leaned in and studied the picture intently. Then her eyes fell to the ledge below the board. It was full of white dust, obviously from other kids who had been forced to draw pictures or write other stuff for her. She picked up a pinch of the white dust, rubbed it between her fingertips and smiled. “Very good, Avi.” She pointed to a blank space on the board. “Now draw it again.”

  “But I—”

  She didn’t interrupt him this time. She didn’t need to. She simply backed up and sat down in her chair. And waited.

  Avi drew the picture again.

  When it was finished, Ms. Fetch surveyed it from her chair. “Excellent, Avi. You’re getting quite good at this. Again.”

  Avi drew the picture again. By now, though, the little nub of chalk was turning to dust in his hand. He was only halfway through the drawing when his fingernails started screeching against the blackboard. The high-pitched squeal of his nails against the board made his body shake and goose bumps swell. His teeth chattered.

  “I didn’t say to stop, did I?”

  Tears were forming in the corners of Avi’s eyes. He had to take a deep breath to keep them from spilling onto his cheeks. “I’m out of chalk.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “How am I supposed to draw without any chalk?”

  Ms. Fetch shrugged.

  Avi looked at his hands. There was a bit of chalk on his fingertips and under his nails. It would have to do.

  Biting his lip, Avi raised his hand to the blackboard and continued to draw the outline of his teacher. His fingernails screeched against the board. The sound and sensation tied knots in Avi’s stomach. It was the same icky feeling he got from
biting down on a hunk of tinfoil or pulling a popsicle stick across his teeth.

  “You’re doing a very good job, Avi. Keep them coming.”

  But Avi couldn’t hear her. He drew that picture over and over. His fingertips burned. He kept scraping the picture onto the board, watching as little flakes of white fluttered down into the ledge beneath the blackboard like fresh snowflakes.

  The dust.

  Avi wondered how much was chalk and how much was shredded fingernails. But it was hard to wonder over that horrible sound.

  Sometime later, Ms. Fetch let him stop.

  The next day Avi came to school with his fingertips in bandages. He’d worn his nails away well past his fingertips. Both hands throbbed with pain.

  Avi had always wanted to be an artist, but he didn’t feel much like drawing anymore.

  He skulked at the far edge of the schoolyard, afraid to get close to the school, even though he knew he would have to go in there sooner or later.

  That’s when Avi noticed his friend Jaiden wandering around with his head hanging down. Jaiden didn’t look so good either. Normally he’d be out playing soccer with the guys on the field.

  “Jaiden, what are you doing here?”

  Jaiden shrugged.

  “Well, you’ll never believe what happened to me after Ms. Fetch caught me drawing.” Avi told him everything that had happened, how Ms. Fetch had made him scratch his own fingernails off against the blackboard.

  Jaiden opened his mouth and smiled. Or tried to. Avi was horrified to see that Jaiden’s teeth didn’t fit together the way they used to. There was a huge gap in Jaiden’s smile, and Avi could see all the way into his mouth.

  “That’s nothing,” said Jaiden, saliva dribbling all down his chin. “Ms. Fetch made me eat my own words!”

  WHISKERS

  Greg took a deep breath and jammed the scoop into the kitty litter. He raised it and watched the sand trickle through the gaps. A residual dark wet clump rolled back and forth. His lungs about to burst, Greg gasped for air and started to gag. Wow, that cat sure could stink up the house!