In one of the abandoned apartments near the subway, deep beneath the heart of one of the mountains, thirteen year old Ronnie found a skull.<\/p>\n
It was an old skull, blackened by dust or dirt or age, transformed into something hard as granite, rough as broken cement blocks, and–to a boy like Ronnie–cooler than anything imaginable.<\/p>\n
He packed the skull in his school bag.\u00c2\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t very well put it in his bedroom.\u00c2\u00a0 But Ronnie knew secret passageways, hidden rooms, places he believed no one had seen in a hundred years or more, and one of those places just happened to be accessible through a sub-basement at home.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t easy to get to.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a tight squeeze, and he had to crawl part of the way.\u00c2\u00a0 The air was stale and dry and scratchy.<\/p>\n
He had a flashlight to guide him, and no fear of make believe things like Spider Dragons and the Nemesai.<\/p>\n
Inside the alcove, he could stand.\u00c2\u00a0 An old bookcase stood against one wall.\u00c2\u00a0 Cobwebs draped the bare and broken shelves.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a tiny table beside it, and enough room for a chair.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u2019d checked for other doors, hollow spaces in the walls, anything, but the alcove had been thoroughly walled off a long time ago.<\/p>\n
Ronnie set the skull on the top shelf of the bookcase, which put it just low enough that he had to squat to look into its empty eye sockets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder how you died,\u201d Ronnie said to the skull.\u00c2\u00a0 He shined the light on it.\u00c2\u00a0 He sat in the dust and continued looking at it and said, \u201cSomeone murdered you, that\u2019s got be it.\u00c2\u00a0 But I wonder why.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Ronnie sat, staring at the skull, the story came to him in short starts and fragments.\u00c2\u00a0 The skull belonged to the victim of a horrible crime, a poisoning at the hands of a lover so she could be with someone else.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u2019d been money involved, theft by murder.\u00c2\u00a0 An escape had been plotted, but the trecherous murderers never got very far.\u00c2\u00a0 The victim\u2019s ghost led them astray, got them turned around in the labyrinthine underworld of the City of Night, where they must still be wandering today.\u00c2\u00a0 Aimless, misdirected.\u00c2\u00a0 Alone with each other.\u00c2\u00a0 Ronnie loved irony: ultimately, the murderers didn\u2019t love each other, and the rift between them swelled until each blamed and despised the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweet justice,\u201d Ronnie, full of pride and grim satisfaction, said to the skull.<\/p>\n
After a while, the flashlight\u2019s batteries began to fail.\u00c2\u00a0 The skull grinned in the dimming light.\u00c2\u00a0 Ronnie got up, tenderly touched the side of the skull, and said, \u201cI\u2019ll be back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He crawled out of the alcove, into the sub-basement, then went upstairs to his room.\u00c2\u00a0 He replaced the batteries, but also got a couple of candles and matches and chalk.<\/p>\n
In the alcove again, Ronnie found the skull still grinning and staring into nothingness.\u00c2\u00a0 He lit the candles, placed them on either side, and said, \u201cI wonder what your name was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ronnie considered a dozen names, including his own, and the name of every missing person he could recall.\u00c2\u00a0 He put his ear to the skull\u2019s toothy mouth as though it might whisper its name.<\/p>\n
\u201cMax,\u201d Ronnie finally decided.\u00c2\u00a0 He scratched the letters into the wall with the chalk.\u00c2\u00a0 Ronnie sat down again, told the skull, Max, stories about the unsavory fates of his murderers, and spent most the day with his new friend.<\/p>\n
The skull merely grinned.<\/p>\n
Later, after Ronnie had gone off to bed and the candle had been extinguished, if he\u2019d been there to lean close enough to the skull\u2019s toothy mouth, he might\u2019ve heard it whisper, \u201cI can answer to Max for a little while.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"