Two Sisters, Chapter 5 ~ Hereditary Madness

Russ stopped by a 711 on his way to the nearest Gate.  He’d learned that the most important things to have when entering an otherworld were Power Bars and bottled water.  There was no telling when you might be able to find food, and after the energy loss inherent in Gate travel, it was very important to eat and drink as soon as possible.

He went on foot.  Traveling through worlds involved a lot more walking than one might expect.  Gates were rarely located a convenient distance from civilization, and the ones that were, were often too dangerous to use.  So even though the barriers between worlds took only moments to transcend, they were usually bookended by hours or days of walking.

He had to walk several miles to find the nearest and most private Gate that day.  He’d never told Liseli, but when choosing their current home seven years ago, he had made sure that there was a usable Gate within reasonable walking distance.  “Reasonable” meant anything that would take less than a day to reach on foot, since taking a car would mean leaving it conspicuously behind.  Driving a car through a Gate was unheard of.  It would not only anger the Gate, but take so much of his own energy to transport that it bordered on suicidal behavior.

It was about fifteen minutes since leaving the 711 that he realized he was being followed.  His pursuer was not being very subtle, which was strange considering all of his children save for Eric usually displayed preternatural sneakiness.  And this was not Eric.

He was not surprised that it was Marcus trailing behind him at about a hundred yard’s distance — ever since that October night, Marcus had been wary of his sister, but fascinated by the questions the revelations about her had raised.  Even though it had become That Which We Do Not Speak Of, Russ knew that Elly Ann had in her possession the book about otherworldly travel by Edward Leeton, and had passed it around to her siblings.

Eric had by all appearances dismissed it as fiction and chosen to ignore most everything that was going on, even the implication that his ability to heal was anything more than luck and panache.  He’d thrown himself even more into training for and competing in Xtreme sports events.  Maybe this was a good thing, though it was troublesome that he now seemed to think his family was a bunch of lunatics.  But at least it meant that he wasn’t planning on revealing an alternate personality or running away to an otherworld anytime soon.

The kids might not know it, but Russ had been assessing them over the past few months.  He’d decided that he had to know if the rest had any Elly-esque surprises in store.  Besides that, there was the issue of who had inherited the ability of a Key and who had not.

It seemed pretty obvious that Elly possessed it . . . among other things.  There was no real proof that Marcus was a Key, but his apparent kleptomania could be seen as a side effect.  Usually Keys turned to theft because they were good at it — the ability to open any door and bypass any lock was something that more mundane burglars had to work at but Keys could do often without even realizing it.  Marcus didn’t need to steal any of the things he took from the mall, but he admitted that once security devices seemed to accidentally pop open in his hand, it had been exciting to stuff the item in his jacket and walk through the security sensors a successful thief.

Since he’d been caught and punished for it, he’d seemed very subdued.  Liseli thought that Russ had been too hard on him, and maybe he had, judging by the sadface Marc had been wearing for months.  The supposedly exciting knowledge about his family had revived him.  There had been several times when it seemed he wanted to bring the subject up, and was full to bursting with unanswered questions, but that time had not yet come.  It was still too uncomfortable to speak about what had happened with Elly Ann and Sam that night in Noah’s house.

Hollie was the youngest, and very quiet.  She seemed interested in little else than being with her best friend, her cousin Adrian, and Russ couldn’t really tell what she thought about Elly, or the book. . . . or anything, really.  It was a little disconcerting.  He couldn’t tell if Hollie was just very reserved, or a little vacant.  As to her being a Key, he doubted it, but only because Edward Leeton’s research on Keys had prompted him to record in the book that the ability, though hereditary, was not guaranteed to be passed on, and was more unlikely in younger children.

Since Leeton had tracked down and spoken to many more Keys than Russ ever had, he had to take the author’s word on the matter.  He certainly couldn’t disprove Leeton, at any rate.  Russ’s own younger brother had never given away any hints that he possessed the ability.  Russ guessed he should personally be thankful that all the Keyness in the Markson line had not stopped with his older sister, Kyla, who certainly seemed restless enough to be a Key.  (Though, if she had any idea about it, she’d never told him, and it was possible it could have skipped her entirely.)

Russ wondered if scientists could pick apart the DNA of someone like him and find “the Key gene,” or if it was actually something magical that defied all reason.  He doubted the former.  His years of exposure to otherworlds and supernaturally gifted people hadn’t made Russ superstitious or inclined to believe in things that had no explanation.  The way he saw it, all these alternate dimensions were simply beyond human understanding the way electricity or motorized vehicles or space travel had been beyond comprehension a hundred years ago in his homeworld.

The network of Gates connecting all the worlds were a far more mysterious counterpoint to Keys such as himself, but he was not convinced that they were something other than extremely advanced humans.  Possibly Gates were to humans what humans were to apes.  After all, it was Gates who had walked among people in the world of Adayzjia and been worshipped as Gods because of their seemingly supernatural powers.  They had even reproduced with humans and it was not a radical leap to suppose that Keys were the result of Gates and Humans mating.  It was also possible that many myths about Gods such as the Greek and Norse pantheons were evidence of similar happenings in his homeworld.  He suspected that Gates knew way more about everything than they were telling.  Edward Leeton was the only one to actually try to track and explain the phenomena, as far as he knew.  Unfortunately Leeton became sidetracked by his quest for immortality and gave up on wandering the worlds before he came even close to having all the answers.  Russ didn’t considered himself a scientist, sorcerer, or historian . . . but now he had kids, and all the stuff he didn’t know about how the worlds worked was fucking up their lives.  That had to stop.

So he was heading to find the only person in all the worlds that he thought might have some answers she was willing to share.  Adayzjia was still living among people in Alisiya, last time he’d checked, and if anyone knew what was going on with the river there, it would be her.  That was also the most likely destination for Elly Ann and her psuedo-sister, since the Lost One (or “River” as Elly Ann liked to refer to her) seemed to owe her continued existence to the magic of those waters.

It all came back to the river, and the river flowed from the place where Adayzjia had once stood as a Gate.

The river was a few dimensions away, however, and Russ was still in San Francisco with his fifteen-year-old son on his heels.  Russ wondered if he should try to lose him, and hope that Marcus would just become discouraged and return home.  He really couldn’t afford to teach Marc about Gate travel.  Not now.  Besides, Liseli was already angry to the point of threatening banishment.  If he needlessly endangered another one of their children, forgiveness might not be an option.  He sighed at the thought.  If only she would stop thinking of the Lost One as a daughter and start thinking of it as a predator, she would see that he wasn’t bent on destroying their family.  He was trying to save it, for fuck’s sake.

Russ decided to pause at a bus stop.  He was curious what Marcus would do, faced with either losing him to the public transit system or making his presence known by trying to board the same bus.

He watched from the corner of his eye as Marc sat down on a bench half a block down.  He wasn’t looking his father’s way at all, almost as if he wasn’t even following him.  As if it was a coincidence that he’d been following him all that way.

The bus came.  Russ got on it, and he was only half relieved that Marc never made a move to approach him or get on the same bus.  It was somehow disappointing, even though having his son tag along was the last thing he needed right now.  Still, he’d been a little impressed for a moment there, thinking Marc was going to make a real effort at pursuit.

He got off at the next stop, and got on another bus going the opposite direction from where he was headed, just to be safe.  It took him another hour just to finally get back around to a stop near the Gate, and he had to walk another twenty minutes to get there.  Probably it hadn’t been a good idea to fuck around so much, since now it was very late in the afternoon, but he felt confident that even if Marc had had some kind of idea to catch the next bus and follow him, he had failed.

The Gate was located in a small residential park.  Parks were good places to find Gates in cities.  Sometimes buildings and doorways were built up around Gates — some of the first Gates he’d gone through had been hidden in doorways — but actually it was very common for Gates to inhabit undeveloped spaces.  Between trees, in caves, and sometimes (he hated these) underwater.  This particular Gate was under a footbridge that arched over a lower walkway between two small hills.  The hills were covered in flowers and the walkway was lined with benches; it was a picturesque little spot and Russ suspected that he might have to sit on a bench and look interested for a while until there were no other people in sight.  That was the downside of finding Gates in parks.

He got to the park and headed down the limestone paved walkway.  The bridge between the hills was just round the corner, and as he went he noted the various people in the park who were near the bridge or might be headed that way.  It was a relatively quiet afternoon due to the earlier rain, luckily, but there were still a few people out walking their dogs or jogging.  An older woman sat on the bench reading a book, but she seemed engrossed enough to possibly not notice him disappearing in a flash of light beneath the bridge.  Also, she was just around the bend in the earth so did not have a clear view.

Then there was Marc.

Russ stopped in amazement when he saw his son perched cross-legged on the bench closest to the bridge.  He looked bored behind a pair of sunglasses (even though it was still overcast) as if he’d been sitting there awhile.  He looked up at Russ when he came round the bend.

“Hi, Dad.”

This broke Russ out of his standstill.  He walked up to the bench, asking, “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.  It took you long enough . . . .”

“Marc, you can’t come with me.”

Marcus took off his sunglasses and unfolded his skinny teenaged legs, getting up from the bench.  “I figured you would say that.  But I already left Mom a note.”

“Marc—”

“Look, I know what’s going on, I’m not stupid.  I know that Elly ran away and you’re going to find her.”

Russ sighed, let his backpack drop to the ground, and sat down.  He noticed that Marc had his own backpack meant for schoolbooks with him, but he guessed there weren’t books in there now.  It was as if Marc was purposefully copying him.

“This isn’t something you can just tag along for.”  He thought for a moment, then added, “I shouldn’t have brought you along last time.”

“Why not?”  Marc hovered anxiously above him, refusing to sit back down.

Russ just shook his head.  “Lots of reasons,” he said.  “All the reasons.”

“That’s bullshit,” Marc countered, and it surprised Russ.  Marc wasn’t the kind of teenager to talk back, not usually.  “I’m fifteen, I’m not a little kid anymore, and besides, I know a lot more about stuff than you think.”

Russ just raised an eyebrow and asked, “How did you know to come here?  I know you were following me, but not after I got on the bus.”

Marc smiled for the first time, looking proud of himself.  “It was in the list of ‘known gates’ and it was the closest one to home.  I figured that’s where you would go.”

“The list . . . .”

“In the book.  Elly gave it to me.”  Marc unzipped his backpack and pulled out Leeton’s book.  “I’ve read it.  The whole thing.  And I know you wrote some of the stuff in here.  Some of it is in your handwriting.”

Russ nodded.  He hadn’t added much to Leeton’s book, not being the anthropologist that the book’s first owner was, but he’d jotted down some helpful information here and there.  Most of the time he’d headed for worlds already documented in the book, so he knew at least a little about what he was getting into, but he’d stumbled into unknown territory enough times.

“It doesn’t mean you’re ready to go to an otherworld.  Reading about it and doing it are very different things.”

“I know!  That’s why I want you to take me with you!”  Marc shoved the book back into his pack, frustrated.  “And anyway, Elly’s already done it.”

“Yeah, and I’m going to find Elly, so it’s not a good time to teach you about it.”

“When, then?  You and Mom both kept this a secret for our whole lives.  It’s way past time you showed me this stuff.  I mean, it’s the whole reason everything’s gone to shit lately, isn’t it?  Elly running away and . . . everything.”

Not the whole reason, Russ thought.  Elly being infected by the Lost One did not have anything to do with whether they’d told their kids about otherworlds or not.  She’d still be half possessed and in trouble even if everything had been out in the open.

Still, Marcus did have a point.  And it was Liseli who had always wanted the kids to be kept in the dark, in the first place.  She thought they’d be safer brought up like completely normal children in a normal family, when they weren’t.  They weren’t normal at all.  And they weren’t safe.

He stood up.  “Your mother is going to go crazy worrying about you, you know that.”

Marc shrugged.  “I left her a note.”

“I’ll bet.”

Marc shrugged his backpack onto his shoulders and said resolutely, “I’m just going to follow you, no matter what.  You can punish me later, if you want.  But I can’t just sit around at home and pretend that everything’s normal.”

Little punk.

“If I let you come with me, we’re getting one thing straight,” Russ said, taking him by the shoulder.  “You are going to listen to me and do exactly what I say.  You’re going to stay by me at all times.  You’re not going to talk to anyone or do anything unless I say so.”

Marc nodded so hard through this speech that he looked like a bobble-head doll with floppy black hair.  His green eyes were suddenly wide with cooperative innocence, when just a moment ago he’d been stubbornly defiant.  “Yeah, yes, of course.  I’ll do everything you say.”

“I’m serious, Marc.  It can be dangerous out there.”  Russ motioned vaguely towards the shadows beneath the bridge.  “It’s not just a matter of me grounding you.  If you do something stupid, you can get us both killed.”

“I’ll do everything you say.”

“Except go home.”

Marc smiled wryly, but said nothing further.

“I’m going to regret this.”  Russ lifted his backpack with a sigh.  But he couldn’t help let a half smile escape, for a moment, before he turned a stern look on Marc.  “Come on, then.”

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