Jack: Secret Histories Read online

  Jack was only halfway through the story and didn’t want to give it up. He reached into his nightstand drawer and pulled out another issue he’d already finished.

  “How about this one?”

  Dad grinned at the cover: High atop the George Washington Bridge, the Spider battled with a guy in some sort of diving suit over a girl in a shredded red dress.

  “‘Slaves of the Laughing Death.’ I love it.” He rose and slapped Jack on the leg. “Thanks. This’ll bring back old memories. And I think you’ll be just fine tonight.”

  Jack thought so too. But he was concerned about the magazine. Mr. Rosen would have his hide if it came back damaged.

  “Just return it in the condition you got it.”

  1

  “No matter what I do, I can’t get it open.”

  Jack could sense Weezy’s frustration. It filled her bedroom like a storm cloud.

  He and Eddie knelt on the floor with the black cube from the mound between them. Weezy sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing her hands together. Jack had told them about the ritual murder story from the sheriff’s office. Usually that kind of thing would grab Weezy’s attention like one of those leg-hold traps they’d seen yesterday, but she seemed completely focused on the cube.

  The Cure’s Pornography was running in her eight-track player and, as usual, the whiny voice was grating on Jack’s nerves.

  “Can’t you play something else?”

  Her smile had no humor in it. “You’d like Siouxsie and the Banshees better? Or how about Bauhaus?” Her taste in music matched her taste in clothes and posters.

  He found the black-and-white Bauhaus poster of some shirtless guy hanging by his hands a little too weird. Give Jack the Spider plugging hot lead into mad villains any day.

  Jack winked at Eddie. “I know she’s got Flashdance hidden around here somewhere.”

  Eddie picked up right away. “She must. I’ve heard it through the wall.” He began to sing. Badly. “‘She’s a maniac, maaaaaniac—’”

  Weezy tossed a pillow at him. “You lie! And what have you been told about that?”

  Eddie looked puzzled. “What?” Then a light seemed to go on. “Oh, hey, I wasn’t thinking.”

  Weezy only glared at him.

  Jack didn’t know what was going on between these two, but doubted it had anything to do with Flashdance. He tried to bring the talk back to music.

  “Bauhaus, then,” he said. “Anything but this.”

  As she popped out the Cure cassette—thank you, God—he picked up the cube and turned it over in his hands.

  “Can’t open it, eh? What’ve you tried?”

  Eddie said, “Anything toolacious. Knife, fork, screwdriver, razor blade, chisel—you name it. Even a hammer. I’m ready to get my dad’s electric drill.”

  “Really?” The glossy black surface looked unmarred. “How come it’s not all scratched up?”

  “Because it doesn’t scratch,” Weezy said, returning to the edge of her bed. “No matter what we do to it.”

  “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” began to play. Jack kind of liked this song.

  “Maybe it doesn’t open. Maybe it’s just a solid cube of—what did you call it yesterday?” “Onyx.”

  “What’s onyx?” Eddie said.

  “A kind of black stone.”

  Eddie snorted. “Black, huh? Figures you’d know about it.”

  Weezy gave him a gentle kick. But Eddie had a point. Weezy was into dark—dark clothes, dark music, dark books. She even kept her shades drawn to make her room dark. The bright morning sun outside had been locked out. At least she didn’t have black sheets, although her bedspread was dark purple. Half a dozen gargoyles peered down at them from her shelves.

  “It’s not solid,” she said. “Give it a shake.” Jack did just that—and felt something shift within. Not much. Just the slightest bit, but enough to tell it was hollow.

  For no particular reason, he dug his thumbnails into the faint groove along one of the edges and—

  The sides of the cube fell open and it tumbled to the floor where it flattened out in a crosslike configuration.

  But what captured and held his attention in an icy grip was the black pyramid inside—but not like any pyramid Jack had ever seen.

  Weezy was off the bed and on the thing like a cat on a mouse. She grabbed it and held it up, turning it over and over.

  “I knew it—I knew it!” Then she looked at Jack, frowning. “How’d you get it open?”

  He shrugged. “I just—”

  “Doesn’t matter. What’s important is it’s open.”

  But it mattered to Jack. He hadn’t done anything special, just edged his thumbnails into the—

  “Some kind of pyramid,” Eddie said. “Maybe it’s Egyptian.”

  “No, the Egyptian pyramids are four-sided. This has six. And it’s engraved with these weird-looking symbols.”

  “Let’s have a look,” Jack said. When Weezy hesitated, he added, “What? Afraid I’ll steal it?”

  She flashed a nervous smile as she handed it over. “Don’t be silly.”

  But Jack could tell she didn’t want to let it go.

  The pyramid felt cold against his skin, and Weezy was right: The symbols, a different one carved into each face, were kind of weird. Not exactly hieroglyphics, but not like any letters he’d ever seen either. He upended it and checked the base. Yep. Another symbol there too.

  “Maybe there’s something in this as well. Maybe it’s like one of those Russian dolls, you know—”

  “Matryoshka,” Weezy said. “A nesting doll.” How did she know this stuff?

  Jack searched the surface for a seam but came up empty.

  “Looks like this is it.”

  “Check this out,” Eddie said, pointing to the flattened box. “There’s something carved on this too.”

  Jack looked and saw what he meant. Some sort of grid had been carved inside the crosspiece of the T.

  Eddie echoed Jack’s sentiments when he said, “What’s all this mean?”

  Jack looked at Weezy, who had retrieved the pyramid and was studying it like a jeweler grading a diamond. All she needed was that little magnifying eyepiece. What was it called? A loupe. Right.

  “Ever see anything like this in any of your secret histories?” He waved at her sagging bookshelf. “One of those books has to—”

  She was shaking her head. “Nothing like this at all. Trust me. I know those books by heart.”

  “Then we’ve got to ask somebody.”

  “No-no-no!” She clutched the pyramid to her chest. “They’ll say it’s evidence and take it from us.”

  “We don’t have to mention it’s got anything to do with the body. We’ll just say we found it somewhere in the Pines and leave it at that.”

  “Okaaaay,” she said slowly. “Let’s say we do that. Who can we show it to?”

  A name popped into Jack’s mind immediately. “Mister Rosen.”

  Weezy made a face. “He’s just a junk dealer.”

  “Yeah, but it’s old junk. He knows everything about old stuff. You even got some of your weirdo books from him, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No buts. If he can’t help us, he’ll know someone who can.”

  “Okay. But first …”

  She jumped up and hurried from the room, taking the pyramid with her.

  “Hey, look,” said Eddie, holding up a reassembled black cube. “I got her back together. The sides just clicked into place. Simplacious.” He started prying at the edges. “But I can’t seem to get her open again.”

  Jack showed him where to position his thumbnails but, try as he might, Eddie couldn’t get it open.

  “Here. Let me have that.”

  He took the cube, positioned his thumbnails the way he’d shown Eddie, and pried.

  The box popped open.

  “How do you do that?” Eddie said.

  Jack had no idea.

  2

  Weezy return
ed carrying the family Polaroid camera.

  “Before we do anything, I’m getting some photos.”

  She set the pyramid on her desk, knelt before it, and snapped a picture from about two feet away. The flash lit the room.

  Probably more light than this room’s seen in a long time, Jack thought.

  The camera whirred and spit out the photo. As expected, it came out blank. Weezy put it aside to let it develop as she rotated the pyramid and—flash, whir—photographed the other side. Then she turned to Jack.

  “Lay that on the floor, okay?” she said, pointing to the unfolded box in his hand.

  He did, then watched as she snapped another picture.

  “Okay,” she said, stepping back to her desk. She picked up the first photo and frowned. “Damn.”

  Jack stepped closer and peered over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was too close.”

  Jack wasn’t so sure. “Maybe. But funny how that pen lying right next to it is in perfect focus.”

  Weezy picked up the second photo: Same thing. And then the one of the unfolded box, where she hadn’t been close at all. The box pieces were blurred but the rug around it was in perfect focus.

  “All blurred.”

  Eddie came over and took a look.

  “I don’t know about you guys,” he said, “but that’s creepitacious.”

  Jack agreed, but didn’t say so. There had to be an explanation.

  “Let’s try this,” he said, grabbing the pyramid and stepping back. He held it waist-high before him. “Take a shot of me holding it.”

  Weezy did just that. The three of them clustered and watched as the image slowly took shape. There stood Jack, his head cut off by the top of the photo frame. The Phillies logo on his T-shirt was perfectly legible, but resting in his hand was a …

  Blur.

  He felt a chill run over his skin.

  Beside him, Eddie said, “I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit.”

  Jack couldn’t have agreed more.

  But Weezy … she looked like she’d just found the Holy Grail. Her eyes shone as she clutched the photo and stared at it.

  “We’ve found one!” she whispered.

  “One what?”

  “A secret … a secret object.”

  Eddie groaned. “Your Secret History of the World again?”

  She turned on him. “You like to make fun of me and that’s okay. Why should you be different from anybody else? But there is a secret history. We think we know what’s happened in the past but we don’t. Most history books don’t even get the events right, and they haven’t a clue as to what was going on behind those events.”

  Eddie snorted. “Oh, and you do?”

  “I wish I did. But I know something’s been going on. Secret societies and mysterious forces are out there pulling strings and manipulating people and events and everyone wants to believe they’re in charge of their lives but they’re not because we’re all being pushed this way and that for secret reasons and we don’t even know it.”

  She was talking a hundred miles an hour, like she’d had a box of Cocoa Puffs and a couple of quarts of Mountain Dew for breakfast. She took a breath and continued.

  “There’s too many coincidences out there. Something’s going on—has been going on throughout human history. And this—” She held up the pyramid. “We weren’t supposed to find this. We’re not supposed to have it. Because it’s proof that not everything is as it seems. I mean, why can’t we photograph it? Answer me that.”

  Eddie shrugged. He looked a little cowed by Weezy’s outburst. “I dunno. Maybe the camera’s broken.”

  Weezy tilted back her head and screeched at the ceiling. “Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Look at those pictures! It’s staring you in the face but you don’t see it because you don’t want to see what you can’t explain because it will upset yours and everybody else’s comfortable little worldview that we’re in control. Well, we aren’t!”

  She stopped, breathing hard. Eddie didn’t speak. Neither did Jack. He’d never seen Weezy like this. Sure, she got hyper at times and had all sorts of strange theories about everything from the Kennedy assassination to Charles Manson, but this was kind of scary. Someone had pushed her hyperdrive button.

  She turned to him. “What about you, Jack? What do you say?” She held up the pyramid. “Something wrong with the camera or something wrong with this?”

  He remembered how clearly he could read his T-shirt in the last photo, yet how blurred the pyramid was, even though he’d been holding it against his chest.

  “The pyramid.” He quickly held up his hand to cut off another speech. “I’m not saying it has anything to do with secret histories—could be it’s made of something that does tricks with light—but I don’t think it’s the camera.”

  She sighed and fixed him with her big dark eyes. “Thank you, Jack. That means a lot.”

  Even though he’d witnessed her mood changes before, her sudden calm jarred him. She’d dropped from pedal-to-the-metal to cruising speed in the blink of an eye.

  “I want to know what it is,” he said.

  She nodded. “I’ve got to know what it is.”

  “Well, we won’t find out sitting here.”

  “Right,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Let’s go see Mister Rosen.”

  3

  Eddie had decided that defending the Earth in Missile Command would be more interesting than listening to whatever Mr. Rosen might have to say. He talked of beating the world-champion score of eighty million points. Fat chance.

  Jack and Weezy could have walked but figured bikes were faster. Neither wanted to wait any longer than necessary. Jack led the way as they pedaled west, the morning sun warm on their backs.

  Funny, he thought as they rode, how he’d lead the way around town, but Weezy tended to take the point whenever they entered the Barrens. Almost as if something in Jack knew the Barrens were her turf and made him take a step back when the pines closed in.

  As they headed for downtown, Jack noticed people in passing cars slowing to stare and point at them.

  Those are the kids who found the body.

  Calling it “downtown” was kind of a local joke. It consisted of eight stores clustered around the traffic signal at the intersection of Quakerton Road and Route 206, a rutted, patched stretch of two-lane blacktop running from Trenton to the Atlantic City Expressway. Johnson didn’t rate a full traffic light, just a blinker.

  As Jack had heard it, Quakerton was the town’s name until 1868, when President Andrew Johnson, maybe trying to get away from the impeachment proceedings in Washington, spent three nights in the town’s one and only inn, now long gone. Seemed no one had liked the name Quakerton—after all, not a single Quaker had ever lived there—so they changed the name to Johnsonville. By 1900 it had been shortened to Johnson.

  The traffic-light cluster consisted of a Krauszer’s convenience store, a used-car lot, and Joe Burdett’s Esso station—the company had changed its name to Exxon better than ten years ago, but old Joe had never changed the sign. Back east along Quakerton sat Spurlin’s Hardware, Hunningshake’s pharmacy, gift, and sweet shoppe, the VFW post, and Mr. Rosen’s place, USED. The sign used to say USED GOODS, but the nor’easter of 1962 ripped off the right side and Mr. Rosen never replaced it.

  The store had two large display windows on either side of the front door. Mr. Rosen had told Jack they’d been peopled with naked mannequins when he’d bought it back in the 1950s from a wedding shop that had gone out of business. Now they were full of what some people called junk but Jack had come to see as treasures from the past. USED was his personal time machine.

  A bell atop the screen door tinkled as they entered. One step inside and the odors hit him—old wood, old cushioned furniture, old paper, a little dry rot, a little rust, and a lot of dust. He loved the smell of this place.

  “Mister Rosen?” he called. “Mister Rosen?”


  A painfully thin, elderly man with a stooped posture, pale skin, and gray hair wandered into view from the rear.

  “All right, already,” he said with a thick accent that sometimes sounded German and sometimes didn’t. “I’m coming, I’m—” He stopped when he saw Jack. “Well, if it isn’t the Finder of Corpses.”

  “You’ve heard?”

  “Heard? Who hasn’t? Probably all over town before you got home.” He studied Jack. “You okay? You want the day off maybe?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Good. They know who it is yet?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  The old man glanced at the gold-and-glass Jefferson mystery clock on a nearby shelf. “At noon you’re due.”

  “I know.” Jack stepped up to the counter and motioned Weezy forward. “But we’ve got something we’d like you to see.”

  Mr. Rosen slipped on a pair of glasses as he moved behind the counter. “Something maybe to sell?”

  “No way,” Weezy blurted. “I mean, we’d just like your expert opinion.”

  “Expert, shmexpert, I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Before leaving Weezy’s they’d reassembled the cube with the pyramid inside. Now she unfolded the bath towel she’d wrapped it in for transport, and placed the cube on the counter.

  Mr. Rosen adjusted his glasses for a closer look. “You bring me a box, a black box, and want to know what it is? In my expert opinion, it’s a black box. Anything inside?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “That’s what we really want to know about.” She stepped aside. “But it’ll open only for Jack.”

  Jack didn’t understand why Weezy and Eddie couldn’t do it. He’d shown them, they’d followed his directions perfectly, yet it refused to open for anyone but him.

  Which only increased the thing’s creep factor.

  He did his thing to make it pop open, and then the three of them stood there at the counter, staring.

  Finally Mr. Rosen reached for the pyramid. “May I?”