Chapter 26

Sunday night, three days before the Scream Time Live event, Gavin receives a video chat request. He’s gaming when it comes through, propped up against a stack of pillows in his bedroom and surrounded by folded laundry and dusty Lego toys he hasn’t touched in weeks. The chiming notification startles him. He almost tosses the tablet like a red-hot cookie sheet when he sees the message: Matt Ritter would like to FaceTime.

Gavin sits bolt upright. He opens his mouth to call for his mother, but something stops him. Listening to the ringtone that signals an incoming video call, he’s overcome with the feeling that the glass screen in his lap is like a soap bubble—the slightest false move could pop it. If his mother takes it from his hands, she might touch the wrong button or icon, might close the lid by accident and lose the call, and it may never come again. Why his father wouldn’t just call back in that event, he can’t say exactly. It’s just a feeling. Connectivity has always been spotty when his dad is deployed, and who knows how far off the grid he is since he went missing? It feels urgent to take the call, to see his father’s face before showing his mother and getting her all worked up.

Also, he realizes as it reaches the third ring, if this is some kind of glitch or mistake or someone else using his father’s account, it will break her heart. It might break his, if the pace and intensity of his heartbeat doesn’t do that by itself. Holding his breath, he touches the green Accept button.

Jittery shapes form on the screen in shades of desert tan and digital gray. Something about the colors tells him that this is outdoor light, daylight, and that makes sense because at this hour of the night it must be tomorrow already in Afghanistan.

Molten gold light flares, haloing a black silhouette that could be the head and shoulders of a man. Gavin tries to calculate what time it is there because this looks like sunrise or sunset, and that can’t be right, can it? But he’s too nervous to work it out.

“Daddy? Daddy? Are you there?”

“Gavin, bud-d-d-dy.” The voice is distorted. It doesn’t sound like his father, but it’s hard to tell. It could be his father speaking through broken teeth or swollen lips, or it could just be the metallic distortion of the stuttering audio making it unfamiliar.

The silhouette moves, the head blocking what must be the sun, and for a few seconds Gavin can almost make out the features of the man’s face. They are his father’s features… he thinks. Only thinner. As if his father has lost weight, but also thin like something translucent, like a photo of Daddy’s face was printed on a fabric mask and the sunlight is shining through it from behind. Ghostlike. That’s the word to describe it, but he shoves it away as soon as his mind produces it. Daddy is not a ghost. Daddy is in Afghanistan. And ghosts don’t use FaceTime.

“Gav-v-v-vin.” His name is chopped up by the digital stuttering, the lagging connection dropping some syllables and getting stuck on others. “I only have a minute. Ma_ee less. I n-n-need you to listen _areful-l-l-ly.”

Gavin glances desperately at the open door of his room, sweat forming on his forehead. Should he call for his mother? If he does, he might miss what Daddy only has a minute to tell him. He swallows, nods, and realizes his father might not be able to see and interpret the signal clearly.

“Okay,” Gavin says. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Daddy. Me and Mom were so worried.”

“I’m sorry, Gav-v-in. Listen, don’t _alk. ___ is i-i-important.”

“Okay, Daddy.” Hot tears prickle at the corners of Gavin’s eyes. He clenches the tablet tight in his hands, digging his fingers into the plastic case, still mindful not to touch the glass.

“You n-n-need to be careful. Beware the liz-z-zard. __derstand?”

Gavin nods, realizes that no, he doesn’t understand, and switches to shaking his head furiously. “Daddy, what do you mean?”

There’s a sound like thunder that crackles the speaker, and Daddy looks over his shoulder. The golden light flares and for a second the screen goes blown out white. When the video feed resolves into shapes again, there’s a blue aura around his father’s silhouette. Behind him, in the distance, what looks like spires, minarets and towers—a city in the clouds, built on a mountain carved of spiral steps.

“Daddy, where are you?”

The silhouette grows larger, moving in closer to the camera and blocking the background, but not before what looks like a city starts to melt and swirl into an intricate set of interlocked circles. A mandala. That’s the word for what that is. His mom has a grownup coloring book of them that someone gave her for her birthday. She only did a couple of them with the brand-new box of colored pencils that came with it.

“I’m outside. I can’t st-st-stay here long. __s the only place I can _alk to you. There’s something b-b-b-bad at the gate. I stepped in its t-t-tracks, and I could see ahead. __ware the lizard, Gavin. Bewa-a-a-are ___ lizard.”

“Lime the Lizard? In my game?”

“I don’t want to see you too soon, _avin. But I can’t tell you not to g-g-go because you can stop it.”

“Stop what? Daddy, you’re scaring me.”

“Listen. Thirty-three minutes after. It hap-p-p-pens again. Find three triangles at the end of the r-r-r-ainbow and mak-k-k-e five.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You will.”

“I want to, but I don’t.”

“I’m _orry, buddy. Words ___ h-h-hard for me. I love you. I _ave to go now.”

“Don’t. Don’t go. I’ll get Mama.”

“Goodbye, Gavin.”

The screen goes black. Gavin taps the home button, but it doesn’t do anything. He taps it again, presses and holds it, but still there’s no response. “No! No, no, no, no, no.”

The battery couldn’t have died; it was on twenty percent. He presses the power switch on the side, then presses and holds it, but the screen remains dark.

He’s scrambling around the bedside table, fumbling with the power adapter, his shaking hands unable to make the plug fit the jack when his mother appears in the doorway, her face etched with wrinkles of concern, but her hand is on her hip signaling that if he’s freaking out over a gadget, she plans to put her foot down and take it away. “What’s going on?”

“The iPad is dead. But the battery wasn’t low, and I lost him, I lost Daddy!”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Daddy FaceTimed me. He called, but the connection was glitchy and then it shut down, the iPad shut down, and I lost him and now it won’t turn on.”

Jessica kneels and takes him by the shoulders. He twists toward the power cable in his hand, but she won’t let him go until he looks at her. He flails and knocks the table, sending the iPad and a stack of fantasy novels avalanching to the floor. Ignoring this and keeping her grip fast on his shoulders, Jessica says, “You saw Daddy? You talked to him? You’re sure it was him?”

There’s a hunger in her eyes, the fire of a fanatic. Gavin recoils from it, hyperventilating. “Yes.” A whisper.

She lets go of him, and now she’s the one frantically connecting the cable to the tablet and jamming the plug into the outlet beside the bed. She succeeds and presses the power button, but the glass remains as black as a starless night.