Generation X Read online

  He got his balance, kicked off upward and fired up his Chamber.

  Up, up through the storm he rose out of control like a balloon losing its air as the tree came flopping down through the sopping forest, tossing aside branches and twigs as it fell, dismembering a couple of cords of hardwood before it clattered across the raging river and settled in a ditch of its own making. Jono came down like a rock but softened his fall by shooting out spits of psionic force at the ground, bouncing in ever-shorter bumps until he touched down on a rock outcropping just upriver of the tumbled old tree.

  By tomorrow afternoon when the waters recede, Jonothon thought, that sucker’ll make a fine sturdy bridge. The tree had reached an equilibrium with its environment. Soon the rest of the forest would follow, at least for another year. Then he noticed the time. He could not forget morning roll call—that always made Sean aggravated for the rest of the day.

  Everett and Angelo came down to breakfast with their bags packed. They traveled light: Everett had a satchel full of clothes and a pair of Nikes laced together through the handles, Angelo carried only a hip-pack stuffed with his wallet and seven changes of underwear.

  “I’m starting to feel seriously stifled around here,” Angelo whispered to Everett as they came down the stairs to the main room.

  “You too?” said Everett. “Cabin fever, huh?”

  “Could be. Everywhere but here, spring’s breaking out. You hear it hit seventy in Boston yesterday?”

  “I’m there, brother mine.”

  They spoke softly. Only Emma could hear them and she was not listening to much of anything.

  The Hellions were calling her to muster. Nothing else mattered.

  Emma couldn’t focus. That was one of her best things, focus. Other than her hair and her collection of shoes. She had great shoes. Lots of them. But other than that one of her best things was ...

  What was she thinking about?

  One of her best things.

  What were her best things?

  Her money? Lots of money. Where did she keep that now?

  And her hair and her shoes.

  Emma looked down at her shoes. Tan and navy wa-

  terproof Gore-Tex dayhikers. Eighty-five dollars. What the well-dressed telepath will wear. Especially in mud season in rural New England,

  Emma stood up to look at her hair in the big mirror over the fireplace in the meeting room. Not bad. She ought to get out more often. She probably wouldn’t.

  “Well we’re almost all here,” Sean said. Walter hadn’t arrived, and Sean wanted to wait until he showed.

  Each morning, the students convened in the living room. First came the daily gab session. Sean always steered the conversation around to what the students had learned the previous day. He found mornings the best time to examine each student’s activities so they could receive constructive criticism on their actions. What with M’s aloofness, Skin’s sarcasm, Chamber’s general depression, and Jubilee’s attitude, it never seemed to work out that way. But he could always hope.

  After the conversation talked itself out, the students got into their red uniforms and went to the biosphere for their workout. Sometimes he’d work with the whole group, sometimes with individuals. Always trying to hone their strengths, always trying to eliminate their weaknesses. Those not active would, presumably, concentrate on their homework. Then after the biosphere session came four hours of classes in history, the arts, and science.

  Sean Cassidy was proud of his students. He knew they worked harder, both physically and mentally, than other students.

  Today, however, there were more immediate problems to discuss. His train of thought was interrupted by a shuffling noise from the hallway. Chamber vaulted over the back of the couch where he sat to throw open the hallway door. There stood Walter, leaning against a wall catching his breath. Jono assisted him into the room.

  “Always the hero, huh?” Walter smiled, standing erect again.

  “Force of habit,” said Chamber.

  Sean assessed the room. Everyone seemed kind of draped over the furniture, rather than sitting in it. Sean never felt that it was his job to teach these kids manners. That was their parents’ job, or the job of their earlier teachers. Still, a little decorum might be in order.

  Oh, what did it matter?

  “Well now we’re really almost all here,” Sean went on, “and most likely Penance is somewhere within earshot. I’d like to discuss the ghost-like manifestations most of us have been exposed to lately.”

  “Is that really why we’re here?” Monet wanted to know. It was unlike her of all people, Sean thought, to interrupt and belittle an idea even before anyone had fully expressed it. “You want us to talk about ghosts?” “Well, actually, yes Monet. I do.”

  “’Smatter, chiquita," Angelo said, “got a hot date?” “Keep your blowhard mouth to yourself, wart-face!” Jubilee snapped at Angelo, who in response grabbed his lips, pulled them far from the rest of his face, waving them up and down at Jubilation like a fleshy jump rope.

  “Euu, gross!” she said and blew a flare in front of his face that might have blinded him for a few moments if his flapping lips had not covered his eyes.

  Sean shouted from deep in his sonic gut and the walls rattled and the furniture clattered across the floor with the kids in it. After that, it was quiet again. “Thank you,” he said in a normal voice.

  Monet said, “I was just suggesting that our time might be better spent if—”

  “Your time will be better spent,” Sean said sternly, “if you follow your headmaster’s agenda before you present unwarranted conclusions of your own.”

  Except for Walter, everyone had seen a dead Hellion. Just today, Paige had come across Jetstream sitting in the big walk-in refrigerator. Paige squealed and ran from the room, leaving the refrigerator door hanging open. She immediately came back in and saw that there was in fact no human projectile sitting anywhere near here.

  Jubilee found Tarot sitting by the artesian well. The Hellion who made images on tarot cards come alive tossed one of a naked woman pouring water into a well—the “Star” card from the Major Arcana—at her when she went to wash her muddied feet in the outdoor spigot after bouncing on the trampoline for forty-five minutes. For a moment the card floating through the air became three-dimensional, like a hologram. Then both Tarot and her naked water woman disappeared. Jubilee almost believed they had never been there and turned on the spigot. When she put one bare foot under the flow of water it was scalding hot and she tumbled onto the ground holding her toes.

  Everett came across Bevatron at the old granite quarry out between the woods and the Mass Pike. He had gone there earlier, he said, to sit and wait for the morning to blow over.

  “What do you mean by that?” Chamber snapped.

  “What do you mean, what do I mean?” Everett asked back.

  “What needs to be blowing over, is what I mean.”

  “Your cruddy mood.”

  “All right, all right,” Sean interrupted. “Did the manifestation do any lasting damage?’ ’

  “No,” Everett said. “Blew a couple of big granite rocks apart. One of them ricocheted and hit me in the throat, but I healed it with willpower.”

  “You can heal yourself with willpower now?” Monet asked, condescendingly.

  “Yeah, I can do a lot of things nobody knows about yet,” Everett snapped back. “Want to see me fix your tongue after some well-meaning suitor rips it out of its socket just to get some relief?”

  “Oh, you’re so vile.” M turned her head away.

  “Cut it out, you guys.” That came from Walter whom, after all, nobody here really knew very well.

  They all looked at him, as though expecting he had more to say.

  He obliged them with a terse, “What?”

  * * *

  They were fighting, Emma knew. Arguing, really, over whatever they felt like arguing about. It doesn ’t matter, she supposed. We’d all be landfill pretty soon anyway. Maybe she would go up to her room and read some Sartre until the young Hellions she had fed to the wolves came and carried her away with them where she belonged.

  What’s with Emma? Sean wondered. Not a word from the woman through all this. He would ponder this circumstance awhile longer until he realized he was not intervening either.

  Some adult supervision, he mused, and failed to intervene some more.

  The discussion had deteriorated from half a dozen reports of supposed Hellion-sightings to a series of nasty contradictions over what was behind them:

  “—ghosts are haunting the old place—”

  “—there’s no such thing as ghosts—”

  “—this isn’t worth our attention—”

  “—we’ve got better things to do—”

  “—if they’re ghosts, then they can’t do anything to us anyway—”

  And so forth.

  Finally Walter said, “You’re wrong, all of you.” “What are we wrong about, electro-boy?” Angelo wanted to know.

  Walter said, “All of the above. There are no ghosts here, but there’s something. Something certainly worth your time. I’ve felt it since I got here. Been resisting it, but I don’t have the energy for it much longer. We’ve got to get to the bottom of it before it gets to the bottom of us.”

  “What are you talking about?” Everett wanted to know. “What do you know about ghosts?”

  “I know a lot about ghosts.”

  “Well I know a lot about dark sinister forces, Statis. I’ve seen them since I was a kid,” the thirteen-year-old Jubilee insisted. “When I was with the X-Men—” “No,” Walter put up his hand. Everyone was shocked at how thin and bony his wrist was. No one had noticed that before. “No,” he said, “you don’t.”

  “So what if it is ghosts?” from Chamber. “So they throw tree limbs and tarot cards at us. So what?” “There’s a force here,” Walter said. “I know because it’s something I feel and I’ve never felt before.”

  “Sounds like ghosts to me,” Chamber said. “Out on the moors back home there are all sorts of stories about—”

  “I’m not talking about stories,” Walter interrupted. “Sorry.” Jono was the only one in the room who had thought to apologize about anything this day.

  “I know what ghosts feel like and this isn’t it.” “Really?” from four kids simultaneously.

  “I knew a ghost,” Walter said. “His name was Hiram. Now he’s disappointed in me.”

  “Hiram, the friendly ghost, the friendliest ghost you know,” Jubilee suddenly started to sing until she realized nobody thought it was funny. Then she went back

  to sulking and disagreeing in general some more. “Disappointed?” Paige asked. “How? Why?”

  “I’ve got the Legacy Virus,” Walter said, as though he had meant to say it casually. “Don’t have a clue how I came down with it, but there it is. Screws up all Hiram’s hard work, too.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment. Jubilation said, “Bummer.” Monet flashed her a dirty look, mistakenly thinking the younger girl was making light of it. Jube couldn’t help the way she talked; she had grown up in Encino, after all. But she’d already lost one friend, II-lyana Rasputin, to the virus.

  “Are you certain?” Jono wanted to know.

  “I confirmed it last night with Hank McCoy.” Sean spoke for the first time since the conversation had deteriorated. “He hasn’t got much time, but he’s chosen to spend it with us.”

  No one had anything they could think of to say after that.

  Sean decided that tempers were too high for the usual daily sessions, so he dismissed the students for the weekend. Ten minutes later, Everett and Angelo found the oldest, rattliest of the half-dozen Jeep Wranglers that Sean kept in the converted carriage house by the gate. Their moods seemed to lift even as they tossed their light luggage into the back and piled themselves into the front seat. Everett turned the key in the ignition.

  “What was that about, bro’?” Angelo asked.

  “I don’t know,” Everett said as he punched the key code into the gate control. “Ghosts got the school or something. And that mutant virus again, hey?”

  The gate swung open and the old heap rattled out with the two boys aboard.

  “Bummer,” one of them said, and by the time they hit Route 9A neither could remember which of them had said it.

  Just leaving was like lifting an enormous weight off both their souls. By the time they got to Sturbridge they thought of calling home to tell the rest of the gang to take a few days away. But even that idea melted off like the last corn snow of spring.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  STATIS

  THE BEAST

  SPIDER WEB

  FIGHTING BACK

  STATIS

  Walter had always lived in a haunted house—or, rather, on a haunted ranch. In the old farmhouse, pencils would walk across the table. Drapes used to shimmer as if with a breeze when the windows were closed. Dessert disappeared if you left it on the table when you went to turn on the television. Once in a while, the family would come home and find the dishes in the cabinets sitting in pieces. Dora would shuffle Walter and his brothers and sister out into the dooryard while Harley gave the house a good talking-to.

  “All right, Hiram,” Harley would say to the empty building, “I know you’re around here somewhere.” Harley would look around, hoping to see the ranch hand who had been trampled in a cattle stampede when Harley’s grandfather owned the spread. He had not seen the ghost in two years and was jealous when one of the kids said they caught sight of the old geezer.

  “This is our place now,” Harley went on, “not yours. And those dishes were the third set you’ve done in since the summer. I want you to lay off the family heirlooms—or what’s left of them anyway. I want you to live and let live or so help me I’ll level this place and start again. I’ll get an exorcist and then where'll you be, hey? I’m gonna borrow Aunt Teddi’s videocassette player and rent that movie if you break any more stuff. That’ll put the fear of man in you.”

  By the time Harley finished his lecture, he was emotionally exhausted and screaming at the top of his lungs about green split-pea soup and throwing people out windows. Dora carried the baby and shuffled uncomfortably in front of her kids in the drive as Harley swaggered out of the house. “Won’t see him again soon,” he said as he escorted his family into the house. “Not for a long time, no sir.”

  Walter looked up at his dad, then behind him, and grinned.

  “Whatcha looking at, Wally?” Harley said. Then he realized what was going on. “That china hound standing there behind me, boy?”

  Walter nodded, smiling.

  “Hell!” Harley slashed and slid, flailing at the air behind him as the laughing ghost of Hiram the hired hand faded from Walter’s view.

  There were no dishes left, so the family piled into the big Oldsmobile and went into town for a pizza. Walter was seven at the time.

  Within a year Harley actually did make good oil one of the threats he routinely tossed over the ghost of Hiram. He built a new ranch house a quarter-mile up the hill from the chicken-coop-cum-farmhouse and invited the neighborhood over to yank down the old post-and-beam building the day after he moved Dora and the kids into the new one. The Nowlands had a huge barbecue to celebrate the new house and, secretly among themselves, the demise of the ghost of the old hired hand.

  For his part, Hiram had no trouble finding his way to the new house. He happily rattled furniture and dropped dishware and howled through the uncaulked comers of the building before the paint dried. Walter had invited him.

  Walter Nowland’s boyhood was a circus of horses and calf roping and shooting rattlers on the prairie and a home on the range. It was every kid’s impossible dream. The catde business was thin and nasty in those years, and Mom and Dad were broke silly most of the time, but that never concerned Walter or his siblings. There was plenty of food, plenty of friends, plenty of stuff to read, and, in his spare time, Walter kicked around in the garage among Harley’s enormous collection of automotive tools. It was boy heaven there.

  And on top of that, there was Hiram.

  “Herd’s drifting off to the left,” Hiram said, and it was.

  The eleven-year-old Walter had to get thirty head of cattle from the trampled south pasture over the creek to the southeast pasture where the undergrowth had been sprouting for two weeks now. It was the first time Harley had let him take any of the livestock from one place to another where there was no fencing along the way. Hiram rode on the air alongside Walter. He bobbed up and down as though he too was on a horse. Maybe somewhere he was.

  “Calf’s wandering and its mother’s going off to get it,” Walter agreed. “If they don’t get back with the herd by the time they’re in the water I’ll round them up.”

  “Bad timing,” Hiram said. “They’re not going to make a decision to step into the water if you don’t make them. And by that time there’ll be more of them wandering out downstream. They won’t stampede or nothing, but they’ll be out of control.”

  “I’m getting the main body down the hill to the creek like Dad said. They’re all branded. If I can’t get them back until later what else can I do?”

  “There’s a lot you can do that you don’t know about,” the ghost said. He looked thoughtfully at the boy. “Hold out your left hand.”

  He did.

  “Now flick the nail of your middle finger with your thumbnail and watch it.”

  A tiny spark of light came off the middle finger and a small electrical arc flashed between his two fingers for a little longer than a second.

  “Yeah,” Walter said, “so what?”

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “My dad told me some weird things would start happening with my body,” Walter told the ghost as though he knew everything in the world that anybody could know. “It has to do with puberty.”

  The ghost slapped himself across the face. Walter could see through where he slapped himself on the face. The ectoplasm, or whatever it was, parted at his cheek, through which Walter could see a steer shove a cow over on her side to splash in the creek.