Crowded Chasms

Tales of Weird Horror

Ben Farthing

Contents

Building

Scarechild

An Encounter with the Perforated Woman

Atlantic in Shadow

The Easement Through Which We Pass

Underneath

Empty Mansions in Heaven

Transcend

Cleansing

Give Me the Wretched Refuse of Your Teeming Shore

Call You Again

Radiation

Boogeyman

Desperation

Lacerare Suonare

Test Your Knowledge

Blogs and Bones

Building

It's a kinda small thing, when you think about it, that instead of being built over the course of several months, the building appeared overnight.

But none of us expected it.

This was Barton Heights, after all. Zoned purely residential. Other neighborhoods in Richmond had tall office buildings, while our little patch of Northside was houses built between 1900 and 1920, two one-story apartment complexes that we were ashamed of, two cemeteries, a well-kept park, and the Triumphant Baptist Church.

We saw the wreckers come in and take out the four houses on the block between Lamb Street and Home Avenue, the daily hire workers pile all the broken beams and crumbled bricks into trailers. Frankie Bulifant went over to the Labor Ready and ended up right back here, cleaning up his backyard for nine dollars an hour. So of course later, everyone asked him if he knew anything about this sudden building, but he didn't.

No one did.

When we went to bed on Wednesday night, there was just an empty lot. Not even a foundation.

Thursday morning, there was a fourteen story high-rise, a sharp rectangle of mirrored glass jabbed into the clear summer sky.

Fifteen-year-old Tiffany Howard said she saw it at two in the morning, but that just made her parents yank her inside to interrogate her on why she was out that late.

Those of us who worked part-time or second shift slowly gathered around the building. Even the first floor walls were all windows, reflecting the green lawns and pastel houses around it. Cement stairs led up to opaque glass doors.

Everyone asked the wrong questions at first. Where are they going to park? With the extra traffic, should our kids still ride bikes in the street? Do you think this'll bring in restaurants or a coffee shop or even – wouldn't it be nice – a grocery store?

And then a little closer to the real issue: are we zoned for this?

It was Frankie's kid brother Anthony who asked what we were all avoiding. Was this here yesterday?

A few at a time, like there was some invisible ticket-counter, we went up to the doors, cupped our hands on the glass to look inside. Anthony said he saw something move, but really we were just staring at opaque glass.

The doors had brass handles, simple bars you would push if someone had the key. Looked like a typical industrial keyhole, needing a key like for a truck but a little thicker.

We knocked like a welcoming committee but no one answered.

I saw someone, said Anthony, right there. But no one listened.

Those of us who worked 9 to 5 left, but a few stayed to walk around the new building, trying fire exit doors, even lifting up on the garage door in back that must have gone down into a basement parking deck. But everything stayed locked up tight.

Anthony snatched Frankie's phone and called the police. Didn't take long for Officer Kemmit to get here – he's usually nearby.

Why'd you call the cops? said Frankie. He knows you stole that Xbox.

Shut up, said Anthony. He don't care. Look at him – he's as lost as we are.

Officer Kemmit banged on the front door like he was serving a warrant, and if they didn't open up he'd kick it down.

Anthony went up next to him. I saw someone in there.

What'd he look like? asked Officer Kemmit.

Short. Like a little kid.

They cupped their hands on the glass like two kids at the zoo.

It was yesterday I was here last, wasn't it?

Think so.

This was an empty lot.

Yeah.

Officer Kemmit went back to his cruiser and pulled out the radio but then put it away without saying anything. I'll be back tomorrow. Gotta see what the sergeant says. Maybe see who owns the land.

It was a normal day after that, for most of us. Still things to do around the house. Family Feud still came on at 11. Even the kids got bored of the boring glass building. Only Mr Gregg kept watching it. He had a folding porch chair that he'd set out and watch whatever there was to watch – construction or tree work or just the sunshine – and he took that chair and set it on the sidewalk right across from the building.

As folks got home from their first shift jobs, and later from their 9 to 5 jobs, they took turns staring at it.

Mr Greggs told them how not a thing had changed all day long.

As the sun set, we noticed that if you stood over on Barton Avenue you could see the red and purple of the sky reflected in the glass.

Mrs. Howard asked why we didn't just turn around and look at the real thing.

When we went inside for the night, Mr Gregg was still staring at the stars dotting the building.

No one slept well.

Anthony was hungry, but he was used to that. He kept getting out of bed to check the locks on the doors and windows. Even took the stapler from the desk to make sure the doggie door stayed shut. When Frankie told him to shut up and get back in bed, he asked if Frankie had Officer Kemmit's cell phone number, but Frankie just rolled over and said why would I have that?

Mrs Howard lay awake, staring at her windows and thinking of the reflected sunset. There was something off about those colors, so she kept her eyes open trying not to see how her curtains kinda matched them. The bad feeling in the colors was thick in the room with her. And this was before she realized Tiffany had snuck out again.

Tiffany had a boyfriend played for the arena football team, said a NFL scout was looking at him. After they went out dancing, he dropped her off a block from her house so she could sneak back in, and that's when she noticed the rear garage door of the building was wide open.

We asked her again and again what was inside but she said the floodlight above the garage just pointed to the ramp leading down to it, and inside all she could see was cement sloped down into shadows.

She stood there, trying to move, trying to look away from the blackness inside, listening to every cricket chirp and rustle of bushes, feeling the sticky night air.

At first, she thought she was hearing the school bus, probably because that was the only diesel engine she was used to hearing in Barton Heights. Then she remembered not only was it July, it was 2 a.m. When the box truck came rumbling down Lamb Avenue, Tiffany found her feet, and she ran behind the sign out front the Triumphant Baptist Church, where she hid behind the words Wed night Bible School to watch the unmarked truck go down the ramp, and the garage door shut after it.

She ran back home, where her mom had gone for a glass of water to cool her nerves and noticed Tiffany not in bed again. Mrs Howard had the phone in her hand, was about to call 911 because even though she was always sneaking out, this time it felt like when Tiffany had fell out of a tree and the whole time it took Mrs Howard to run to her daughter this nausea came saying your baby girl might be dead your baby girl might be dead. But then Tiffany burst in and they embraced like they'd survived Hurricane Katrina, and Mrs Howard didn't even ask why her daughter smelled like Hennessy. They had a moment right after where neither could say what made them so scared, so they went to bed. Twenty minutes later, Mrs Howard got up to check the locks, not knowing that Tiffany already done it.

In the morning, life was almost normal. We'd already seen the building, already tried the doors. After hearing Tiffany's story, a few of us walked down the ramp to try to open the garage door, but we couldn't.

Mr Greggs left his chair out. Probably because he'd gotten tired and went home, and had plans to come back to the same spot once he woke up and had his morning coffee.

Anthony played Xbox while Frankie went to the Labor Ready again, only this time Anthony kept losing and nobody came to ask Frankie to work, and that tore Frankie up because there was a sale at the corner store on hotdogs and if he got paid today instead of tomorrow they were buy-one-get-one-free. Anthony never complained, though.

Mrs Howard didn't trust cops – her mama had lived through the 60s – but she did trust Diane Walker from Channel 12 News On Your Side, so that's who she called. A news van with that rainbow peacock came out, but it wasn't Diane Walker got out. It was some young reporter nobody seen before. He was mad to be here.

What's this about? His posture was a forced relaxed, like he was used to being the only white guy, but not really used to it.

His face just got madder and madder as Mrs Howard explained.

We didn't hear exactly what she said or he said back, but Mrs Howard started yelling and howling like she did the time she scared away that dumbass college kid pusher that came around. The cameraman pointed his camera up at the building until the reporter told him to get back in the van and they left.

She went back inside and our day continued on almost normal, except for the building being there.

That afternoon, a cop car and a city truck parked in front of it, and Anthony came running up, but then he saw it wasn't Officer Kemmit, it was a shorter cop, the kind you have to be careful because they scare a lot quicker, and with him was a man in khakis and a white polo.

Anthony wanted to know where's Officer Kemmit.

Not here, said the cop.

The other guy looked up at the building and then asked the cop what they were looking for.

I don't know. If it's up to code, I think.

He pulled an iPad from his truck and tapped the screen for a few minutes before saying that it had been inspected three months ago.

It's only been here since yesterday, said Anthony. Ask Officer Kemmit.

It's just a building, said the cop. Your neighborhood's practically the same. Don't worry about it.

And then Barton Heights was just us and the building again.

Anthony went and sat in Mr Greggs' chair for a while, to show the building he wasn't afraid, and then he thought maybe Mr Greggs still had some of those microwave pizzas they sometimes had at the Scratch N' Dent grocery store, so he knocked but Mr Greggs must have still been asleep or had his TV up real loud or gone to visit his daughter.

Frankie didn't come right home after the Labor Ready closed. He walked a few miles to Walmart where he used his last $1.02 to buy a loaf of bread and he lifted a store brand jar of peanut butter. He didn't bother thumbing a ride, as no one really stopped, and if they did they just drove off once they heard Barton Heights. Must have been by the time he started walking back, it was already getting dark.

Anthony wished they had two phones. He checked the locks and put a few more staples in the doggie door. Frankie stayed out late sometimes, so even though tonight felt worse, Anthony made himself go to bed and close his eyes.

It was dark and most of us had turned in for the night by the time Frankie made it back. It had started raining, a warm drizzle. He saw Mr Greggs' chair and decided he should take it to him before someone made off with it, but before he did he noticed the garage door was opened.

The concrete down to it looked slick, just barely reflecting the flood light above. Through the door, Frankie could see maybe ten feet of brick walls before it was just darkness.

He glanced up at the building, a cut into the sky, blocking the stars where the clouds didn't already. There was probably all sorts of stuff in there you could pawn. And if no one was using the building, no one would care if it was gone. He thought about what Anthony's face would look like when he brought home an extra-large pepperoni pizza with stuffed crust.

In the morning, Anthony went outside and noticed scratches on the outside of the doggie door, and on the ground what might have been a fingernail. He asked around about Frankie, but we all knew sometimes Frankie took off for a few days. We'd look after Anthony until he got back, like we always did.

That's what we told ourselves. It was the only way to avoid the responsibility of going after him.

It's a little thing, really, having this addition to our neighborhood. It's not like we should've been going outside at night before. If you just keep your eyes on the green grass and pastel houses and Triumphant Baptist Church, our lives are almost the same.

Author’s Note:

This story was my first jaunt into this idea of a skyscraper appearing overnight. It later evolved into my novel It Waits on the Top Floor. If you’d like to read about an expedition into this impossible building, you can grab that novel here:

>>>Tap here to start reading It Waits on the Top Floor

Scarechild

(Originally published in Bards & Sages Quarterly, 2008)

Gene walked up the front steps of the old shack at the end of his street. He knocked, but figured the creaking porch was enough to announce his presence.

A face lined with age peered through the screen door.

"Um, I'm Gene Stamp from down the street. Mister..."

The old man waited a moment, then his mouth made an "o" as he realized Gene was asking for his name. "Jones. My name is Lambert Jones." His voice scraped against the splintering doorframe before reaching Gene's ears. "What can I do for yer, Mister Stamp?"

"It seems my son's dog ran off into your cornfield, and-"

"Did he follow it?" Mister Jones leaned his head forward, his eyes wide.

"Well, no. He said the scarecrows were too frightening."

"Well that's what them's there for."

"I see. Would it be possible...that is...I was wondering if...may I have permission to search your cornfield for my dog?"

"Why don't I just go back and take a look by myself?"

Something about this man made Gene want to be there when he found his son's dog. "I'd prefer to accompany you."

Mister Jones grunted acquiescence. He stepped off the porch and headed around the back. "Do you get scairt easily, Mister Stamp?"

"Not especially, no."

They passed a scarecrow made of stuffed clothes. Its head was a burlap sack with straw sticking out of the bottom.

"Do you get scairt, Mister Stamp?"

"You just asked me that."

"I asked you if you get scairt easy. Now I'm asking if you get scairt."

Gene laughed nervously. "I suppose. Doesn't everyone?"

"Yup. Most do. If you find yourself ascairt once we get inside the corn patch, just follow the scarecrows to get out."

"Will do." Now if they could just find the dog and leave.

Gene followed the old man into the cornfield. The stalks reached above his head, dimming the crimson sunset.

Mister Jones walked purposefully, headed in a single direction.

"You seem to know where to look," said Gene.

"I got a good idea."

They came to another scarecrow. This one looked like the first, but there was a bulge on the left of its forehead. The bulge didn't seem to be a mistake; there were extra stitches and extra burlap.

"Funny-looking scarecrow," said Gene.

Mister Jones gave a noncommittal grunt.

They walked another thirty yards, and came upon another scarecrow. This one had the same bulge on its head. The whole thing seemed to be slipping off its post, but further inspection revealed it was intentionally made this way. A string wrapped around its neck and stretched to the top of the post, creating a hunchback look.

Gene paused. The scarecrow shifted in the wind, as if trying to shake free of its post.

"You need all this to keep the crows away?" asked Gene.

"I never said it was for crows."

Gene started to ask what he meant, but something glinted at the base of the hunchbacked scarecrow. He picked it up. "This is my dog's collar. It's ripped."

Mister Jones nodded and kept walking.

"Hey! Wait." Someone must have torn this off. The dog couldn't have ripped it by himself. "Do you know where my dog is?"

"I know where it might be."

The jungle of corn suddenly disappeared, revealing a circular clearing. In the middle, a pit dropped out of sight. The closer the corn grew to the pit, the worse it withered. Nothing grew within ten feet of the hole.

A disfigured scarecrow stood guard over the pit. It was hunchbacked and its head bulged out. Extra limbs hung from its chest. Two noses were stitched onto an otherwise featureless face.

"What are you trying to scare away, Mister Jones?"

"Nosy teenagers. Kids."

"Well you certainly scared my kid. But why-"

Something grunted inside the pit.

Gene crept forward.

"If you get scairt, I wouldn't do that."

But Gene was already peering into the pit. A hunchbacked figure raised its sightless face, sniffed its dual noses. A lifeless dog lay beneath the thing's extra limbs. All five limbs reached toward Gene and it leapt. It scratched at the wall of the pit and howled a muffled, screeching wail.

Gene tried to scream, but could only run.

"Follow the scarecrows," called Mister Jones.

Morning sunlight glowed in the sky before Gene found his way out of the cornfield.

An Encounter with the Perforated Woman

Cheryl noticed the license plates calling her by name.

She drove around the Beltway back home, her son David in the front seat. He was speaking, but she couldn’t pay attention to him over the license plates.

Even through the squeaking wiper blades and gray rain, the blocky letters on the other cars stood out, demanding her attention one at a time, so her eyes darted from the little roadster in the passing lane, to a semi that rumbled by, to four other cars, until it spelled out C-h-e-r-y-l. She couldn't help looking, each letter in turn becoming as attention-grabbing as a neon sign in a ghost town.

"It's frustrating, though, isn't it?" said David, continuing whatever conversation the license plates had interrupted.

"What's that?" Cheryl pushed aside whatever tricks her mind had decided to play. It was the first David had been home since two Christmases ago, but now he was opening a branch of his financial planning company in D.C., so he'd be spending at least several months with her. "Sorry, I got distracted."

"That they said the car had a clean title, but when we get there it's a rebuilt title."

"Borrow the Honda while you're here," she said, repeating the same suggestion she'd been making since she'd picked him up at the airport last night. "I'll take a cab when I need to get somewhere."

A flashing yellow sign over the freeway read: CAUTION.

The "C" demanded her attention, followed by a flurry of letters on signs, license plates, and bumper stickers.

CHERYL. LISTEN.

"Mom? Mom!"

Red lights ahead. She pumped the brake pedal, slowing just in time to avoid smashing into the rear of a minivan.

After catching her breath, she said, "I'm sorry, I think I might need to lie down for a little while." The day had been totally ordinary until now, so there was no reason for what was going on in her head. She'd only taken her usual blood pressure and allergy medications, and she hadn't even had a glass of wine since last Thursday night at book club.

"Your hands are shaking," said David. "Would you like me to drive?"

"That's probably a good idea."

"Take this exit. Did you eat breakfast? Maybe you need some food."

"Let's just go home," said Cheryl, pulling off the Beltway and onto Patterson. "I'll close my eyes for a few minutes and I'm sure I'll feel better. Just a little rattled."

"Absolutely, Mom. Whatever you need."

She tried to stare only at the pavement ahead. Brightly colored store signs wouldn’t let her ignore them. Rapid fire, letters grabbed her attention until they spelled out:

CHERYL. LISTEN NOW.

It carried emphasis this time, insistent.

She parked in front of a laundromat.

"I can see if they have a soda machine in there," offered David.

Cheryl looked inside and immediately regretted it. A paragraph of vinyl window lettering pushed out the rest of the world. It listed the rules for patrons to follow, but Cheryl saw another message, her attention sucked to one letter and then another, bouncing back and forth across the paragraph, repeating letters when necessary.

THE PERFORATED WOMAN IS COMING.

She fumbled with the door handle and crawled out of the car, rubbed at her eyes and breathed deep. Cool raindrops pattered on her shoulders and hair. David's door opened and a moment later she felt his hands on her shoulders.

"Hey. Should I take you to the doctor?"

Before she could respond, every sign in sight screamed out at once. They yanked her eyes along three letters:

RUN

"Can we just go home," said Cheryl.

David helped her toward the passenger side, and then a woman stood in front of them. She was about David's age, with straight dark hair and high cheekbones. She wasn't dressed for the rain, instead wearing slacks and a faded red blouse. Even still, while her clothes were soaked, her skin looked completely dry.

"Excuse us," said David, as if this newcomer hadn't appeared out of nowhere. "We need to get by."

A pattern of tiny splotches appeared on the woman's chest, moving out from under her clothes. Cheryl tried to figure out what she was seeing. It wasn't acne, or age spots, or scars. It was a swarm of holes, moving up her chest both together and independently like a school of fish. Each deep enough to show teeth or bone, but instead only revealing pink flesh descending into shadow.

Cheryl's stomach clenched, her throat tightened. She wanted to take the advice of the letters and flee, but fascination mixed in with revulsion as she watched the perforations.

"Miss," said David, lifting his hand toward her, "what's on your..." He trailed off.

The woman tilted her head and smiled. The holes swam out of sight beneath her blouse, appeared on her hand, then disappeared back up her sleeve.

Cheryl felt deep in her gut that this woman was a threat. She backed away, tugging at her son’s arm. "Please," she said, but David’s gaze was locked on the swarm of punctures.

The holes glided over the woman's face, over – oh, God – over her eyes, her open eyes, tiny fleshy pits slipping along whites and blues and irises. She glanced at Cheryl, and for a moment, a sensation under her eye, beside her nose, of a single pore widening, opening into a gaping maw to mimic this newcomer. The woman's gaze returned to David. Cheryl touched her cheek. It was smooth.

David leaned closer, his outstretched finger hovering between his face and the woman's.

"Listen to me," pleaded Cheryl.

A slight smirk on the woman's face.

Setting her feet like when she was rearranging furniture, Cheryl yanked on David's arm. She caught him off balance and he stumbled into her, knocking her to the rough sidewalk. A stinging in her skinned palms.

"Mom, I'm so sorry." David falling over himself to help her up. "Did I hurt you?"

"Look out," Cheryl breathed, stretching to see around her son.

David jerked his head around. The Perforated Woman was gone.

"What's wrong? Look out for what?"

Cheryl looked around frantically, not for support but to put herself between her son and their attacker. "Where'd she go? Do you see her?"

"Who?"

From behind the window, a laundromat patron watched with a bemused grin. Cheryl stood away from David and straightened her glasses. She did her best to avoid seeing the letters on the glass stand out in a new order:

IM SO SORRY

She forced evenness into her voice. "I thought I saw someone I knew. Let's go home."

* * *

David parked in the driveway and scratched at his neck. "Know what? I'm actually feeling kinda funny, myself. I think I'll lie down for a while, too. I still have an hour before my conference call."

Cheryl felt an odd sort of relief that David didn't remember the Perforated Woman. It meant she needed to ask her doctor for a referral to a neurologist, but that was doable. There wasn't a specialist if the universe was speaking to you through license plates.

David checked his watch. A confused grunt. "Something on my arm."

Cheryl looked, newfound hope draining away before she even saw it: a single hole, half a centimeter across, just below his wrist. Pink fleshy walls, with a bottom that always stayed just out of sight.

"Or in my arm, I guess. Something must have bit me." He poked it, and it darted to his elbow. "Shit!"

Cheryl watched, stunned, as her son swatted at his arm, followed it underneath his shirt, pounded his chest.

"Where'd it go? I can't feel it." He jumped out of the car, unbuttoned his shirt.

Cheryl slowly got out of the car, trying to wrap her mind around what had been on that woman and gotten on her son.

Shirtless, David stretched to look at his shoulder. "It's some kind of bug or something. Do you see it?"

"Come on inside," said Cheryl, steeling herself. "I'll get the first aid kit."

David followed her inside and into the bathroom. "What sort of insect burrows into you? I thought those were only in South America, or Africa or some shit."

Cheryl glanced at her bookshelf as they passed, but the titles and authors were silent.

She grabbed the repurposed fishing tackle box from under the sink, determined to try anything and everything.

David smacked himself in the stomach. "Got it," he triumphantly declared. But when he lifted his hand his stomach was clear. Movement on his palm, and David let out a noise between a shriek and a moan. He banged his hand on the counter, swatted at his arm, then as the perforation jumped hands again, tried to shake free of it. It slid up his arm toward his face. He jerked away, slamming his back against the wall.

"Hold still," said Cheryl, turning on the voice she'd used thirty years ago when he'd get a splinter. She took out a pair of tweezers. It wasn't a stinger she could pull out, but maybe she could force it to stay still.

"I don't understand why I can't feel it," said David.

With a careful hand, Cheryl tracked the hole along his neck, down his side, lowering the tweezers slowly until she was tracing its path only a millisecond behind. She jabbed the tweezers into the hole.

David winced. "Ow. I can't see. Did you get it?"

When the hole's edge touched the metal, David's skin had parted and the hole had continued, leaving the sharp point stabbed into his side. She yanked the tweezers out. A drop of blood against his pale flesh.

"It's still there. Hold on."

They tried splashing it with rubbing alcohol, holding it in place with gauze, and filling it with antiseptic ointment. Nothing slowed it, and anything that went inside remained in his skin after it passed. The ointment left a yellow smear on his back that wouldn't rub off.

Against Cheryl's protests, David tried holding a lighter close to it, although he stopped short of burning himself. He sprayed it with insecticide, which made him twitch in pain as the poison got stuck inside his skin. Cheryl drew the line when he went for the knife drawer.

"No. I'll call Doctor Bringle and see if he can fit you in. Go soak in the bathtub. Maybe that'll do something."

David acquiesced.

Cheryl got her address book from the study. She paused, hoping the letters would say something, but they didn't. Wherever the first warning came from, it was silent now. The receptionist put Cheryl on hold, then came back to say that Doctor Bringle would be happy to stay late to see David, and if he could come at six and bring his insurance information. Cheryl's watch read 2:19.

As she ended the call, David came into the room, buttoning his shirt. Soaked hair dripped a dark spot onto his back. Every step, every turn of his head, every twitch of his fingers was a series of tiny, frantic movements.

"That's too long," he answered when she told him about Doctor Bringle. "I'm going to the ER."

"I'll drive you."

David unrolled his sleeves, covering his arms. The hole peeked out of his collar, then glided up along his scalp. "No, I'll drive myself. No need for you to sit around waiting for me."

"I don't mind. Let me grab my shoes."

"I said I'll drive myself," snapped David.

Cheryl recoiled.

David went out the door, one shoe untied. The Honda's engine started, roared, and then faded as he drove off.

Wind blew rain through the open door onto the foyer's linoleum floor.

The hole had slid around behind his left ear, then the right, then back down his neck, just like it had in the bathroom, and – Cheryl was almost certain – outside when he'd first taken off his shirt.

It was following a pattern.

* * *

If she had two cars, she would have followed him. As it was, she wasn't going to call a cab when David had made it clear he wanted to go alone.

Cheryl poured a glass of milk and unwrapped a brownie. Her normal relaxing vice wasn't cutting it. She sat on the couch, closed her eyes, and tried to process what was going on.

Just because she hadn't seen it before, didn't mean no one had. David could be right; it could be a bug or something. The woman outside the laundromat could have been infected with some parasite that she gave to David.

She hopped on the computer and did a few searches. Nothing relevant came up, no matter how she phrased the search.

Her phone rang. It was David. "Hey, Mom, can you hear me?" In the background, a sports announcer and a woman getting testy in an intake interview. David's words came quickly. "I'm sorry about earlier. I was just really freaked out, you know?"

"That's okay," said Cheryl, but David kept on.

"I'm still freaked, if I'm being honest. I try not to look at it, but I know it's there. And I still can't feel it. You should have seen the look the nurse gave me when I said that part. I wanted to show her but she was all 'leave your shirt on, you can show the doctor.'"

"I'm sure they'll be able to help you," she said.

"Yeah, I hope so. Just wanted to call and apologize. I'll keep you updated."

When David was nine, an expert bully picked him as a target. The bully kept it out of view of the teachers so well, that Cheryl had to go all the way to the school board to get David transferred to another class. That feeling of helplessness was back a hundredfold, and now there was no school board to solve everything.

Cheryl went to the attic. The exposed lightbulb flickered and buzzed to life. Rain pattered on the roof. She had to crouch to avoid hitting her head on the plywood ceiling, and its hundreds of shingle nails punching through, turning the attic into an iron maiden of bizarre proportions.

She moved aside boxes until she found where she'd tucked away a few of David's old toys, hopeful for grandchildren. She dragged it under the light, dug through Ninja Turtles and plastic Uzis to pull out a Ziploc bag of refrigerator letter magnets. She dumped them onto the rough wood floor.

Help, she spelled.

A light gust of wind whispered above. It wasn't an answer.

The air conditioner kicked on, rattling the floorboards. The old electrical system struggled, and the lightbulb dimmed, then flared bright as a bonfire before returning to normal. Cheryl listened for a voice that wasn't there.

She rearranged the letters. Please.

She thought maybe the "e" was enticing, and then the "x," but then she found herself deciding what should come next, and that was nothing like the urgency which with the license plates and road signs had demanded her attention, one after another like someone banging out a message on a typewriter.

Fine. She could wait. She'd stare at the letters all night if she had to.

The rain had died down and her legs were numb when David phoned again. "Mom?"

"I'm here."

"Mom."

"What happened? Where are you?"

"I'm in the car. Still at the hospital. The doctor couldn't see it. It was there, but it hid. I moved around trying to show him. It kept sliding around out of view. He thought I was trying to get painkillers."

"Are you coming home?"

"Not yet. I'm going to try something else."

"No. David, come home, and we'll figure it out."

"I will. Just one stop first. Two hours, tops." He ended the call.

Cheryl rocked, rubbing her mouth. The hole had been moving in a pattern, she'd been sure of it, tracing some pathway or blueprint around her son's body.

She was sure that was the key—the pattern.

And since it hid from the doctor, that meant it had a goal it didn't want interrupted.

The milk felt sour in Cheryl's stomach.

She wouldn't let that thing hurt her son. When he got home, she'd cup her hands around it, lure it into her own body. Then tell David he had to live somewhere else while he was in D.C.

NO, said the magnet letters.

What then? Let it stay in him, until it drove him crazy? Or worse, finished its pattern and what then? If there was a chance she could take that away from David, she had to try.

Her neck jerked with the force of the letters claiming her focus.

NO.

"I'm his mother! You can't tell me not to save him without telling me why."

Somewhere in the periphery of her vision, a mouse burrowed into the pink fiberglass insulation. Cheryl stared at the letters, willing an explanation.

Steadily, purposefully, the letters spelled out another message:

5th & Jackson

Cheryl didn't know exactly where that was, but the cab company would. She called and was in the back of a cab within twenty minutes, headed for a part of the city she didn't know, garnering disapproving glances from the driver.

"Are you sure this is the place?" he asked when they arrived.

Two story brick apartment buildings lined the street. A basketball court behind a chain link fence. She paid the driver and got out. She'd been worried about sticking out in this part of town, but it was dusk, and nobody stuck out when the world was varying shades of gray.

Cheryl looked at the road signs, the apartment entrance sign, everything and anything. She leaned on a brick wall, waited.

A group of young men in sagging pants and flat brimmed hats sauntered by. One gave her a predatory stare. She held her breath until they passed.

A little boy of around seven walked up to her.

"Hello," said Cheryl.

"My mom said you gotta get out of here."

"Well your mom doesn't own the corner, does she?"

"No, I mean, she said you gotta get out of here." He stretched his arms out and waved at everything around them. "She said you gotta go away."

"I'm meeting someone."

He sighed, then spoke like he was reciting something boring. "My mom said she's sorry she invited you, because something came up, but that you need to go far away for a long time."

Cheryl looked closer at the boy. "Your mom talks through the letters?"

"I'm not allowed to say."

"Can you take me to her? She knows about the woman with the holes. How do I get rid of them?"

"No one's allowed to come over. That's why I have to go outside and talk to people sometimes."

"Then I'll wait here. Please, go ask her how I get rid of the holes."

"I think if she told you then she’d get in trouble with the man who steals skin."

“Steals skin?”

"Yeah. I have to go now. My homework's not done."

"Wait. You have to take me to her." Cheryl grabbed his shoulder, but he wriggled free and ran.

He turned and yelled again: "Go far away. Really far away." Then he sprinted away.

Cheryl didn't hold any delusions about trying to catch him.

She called the same cab company, and the same driver picked her up. "That didn't take long," he said.

This whole trip was pointless. Whoever was sending her messages through letters, they weren’t going to help anymore. Cheryl had only one option left.

David called during the ride home. "Mom, where are you? I picked up one of those nice knife sharpeners. My hands feel real funny."

"Don't touch the knives! You haven't hurt yourself, have you? I'll be right there," she said. "I think I know what to do."

"You don't have to worry. I tried slicing it off on a patch of skin, but it was too fast. Don't worry, though, because I sprayed stain remover where I dripped on the carpet."

"David, please, just lie down and wait for me. I'll be home in twenty minutes."

"Forty-five," said the driver. "Traffic."

Cheryl choked back a sob.

A hint of curiosity blossomed in David’s voice. "It's going around the missing skin. It doesn't like that I interrupted its pattern.”

"Please listen to me," she said.

"I have to go, Mom. I have another idea." He ended the call.

Cheryl called back three times before giving up.

"It's none of my business," said the driver, "but maybe don't leave your kids at home alone when you go buy drugs next time. You want me to call the police or something?"

"I'll do it," she said. Even if the hole hid from them, they could stop David from cutting himself any more.

She called 911 and told them her address and that her son had threatened suicide and to please get there fast. The operator said to stay on the line, and she answered questions about David, and made up details about his recent suicidal plans. The questions became less relevant, until the operator said that the ambulance had arrived just two minutes after the police, and David was on his way to the hospital.

"Oh god, what did he do to himself?"

He was alive and he was getting the best help available and Cheryl should meet him at the hospital but now the operator needed to end the call to make herself available for other emergencies.

The driver dropped Cheryl off twenty minutes later. Reception made her prove who she was and then sent her to the trauma center waiting room, where she sat alone with the magazines and the smell of antiseptic.

The doctor came out and said that David would be fine, that he hadn't lost as much blood as it looked like, but he'd cut too many tendons in his ankle, and they'd have to start surgery to save his foot right away.

"We just wanted to verify that his skin condition is anything chronic before administering anesthesia. His medical history is out of date, and he's not currently coherent."

"Skin condition? You can see it? Can you fix it?"

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "Could you come with me for a second?"

She followed him into a room full of bright lights and white curtains and David lying in a bed of white sheets and wearing a white hospital gown and squeezing his eyes shut. Gauze was wrapped around both feet.

"If he's got any medical history that could cause this, we need to know as it could affect which anesthesia we use. Can you tell us if he had a bad sunburn recently, or maybe came in contact with some poison ivy?" The doctor gently lifted David's forearm.

"Sunburn?" Cheryl touched her sons arm. The skin was pale, and felt loose against his bones. The skin on his fingertips dangled like a glove slipping about to slip off.

"What's wrong with him?" she asked.

"If you could just verify that he's never been diagnosed with any chronic skin conditions.” As the doctor focused on Cheryl, the hole swam into sight across David's arm, then under the hospital gown.

"His skin looks like it's about to fall off!"

"I can assure you that's not going to happen. Maybe it's best if you could return to the waiting room, we'll keep you updated."

It was happening again. David forgot about the Perforated Woman, and now the doctors weren't seeing what was right in front of them.

Cheryl held very still, careful not to show her hands shaking. She had one last idea to save David, no matter what that little boy's mother had said. "Can I say something to him first?"

"Of course."

Cheryl leaned over to speak softly into David's ear. She told him everything was going to be okay, and then she told him again, and then a third time. Finally, on the fourth time, the hole swam back into view, up his neck. She knew the pattern now. She could see how it was loosening his skin bit by bit, so it could all be removed in one piece. Cheryl wouldn’t let that happen. She watched the pattern, readied herself for the hole to slide back around, and then pressed her palm just under David’s ear, covering the hole.

She felt a pore widen, filling her with relief and revulsion. It slid up her arm, a slight stretching of skin and a soft breath of coolness. David had kept saying he could feel it. But she could. That was a sign that her plan had worked. It was now her cross to bear.

Cheryl stood and thanked the doctor. She looked at her hands as she left the room, watched the hole begin the first lap of its pattern. As the door closed, she turned to get one more glimpse of her son before she went far away for a long time.

David was sitting up in bed, staring at her in horror. Dozens, hundreds of holes swarmed over his body, painting their pattern with broad, chaotic strokes. The door swung shut.

Author’s Note:

If you’ve already read my urban fantasy thriller Boom, then you’ll recognize the Perforated Woman. In this story, I wanted to explore the horror of a “regular” person encountering the Perforated Woman on one of her acquisitions for Undone Duncan.

If you haven’t read Boom, and you’d like to see the Perforated Woman go head-to-head with someone her equal in power, you can grab Boom here:

BOOM: A Lovecraftian Urban Fantasy Thriller

Atlantic in Shadow

(Originally published in Alternative Coordinates, 2009)

"You're such an idealist, Dad. In the entire history of Earth, there has never been a meeting of two peoples that didn't end with one side trying to kill the other. The stronger always exterminates the other like insects." Tika's face reddened. "King-tetrarch to D4-triangle." The holographic tetrarch moved through the chess cube. "Check."

John Pelfry looked up from the game. Her mother had made the same argument, twenty years ago. Tika wouldn't remember that, though. He didn't think she had many memories of her mother at all. Pushing away grief, John played his side of the debate. "You don't have enough faith in your fellow man. We're not the same culture we were three thousand years ago. There are different options now. In fact, I doubt that claim at all. Alphie, is what she said true?"

Alphie, their humanoid link to the ship's computer furled his brow. "Which part of what she said, sir?"

"Make your move, Dad."

Because Alphie's Emotion Imitation System worked so convincingly, John often forgot that he was still a computer and still required direct commands. "Alphie, search Earth history database for situations wherein two societies encounter each other for the first time, and the outcome is peaceful."

"Peaceful for how long, sir?"

"See?" said Tika. "It's a machine. That's why I don't use it for anything but math."

"He's a link to unlimited information. Sometimes I think if I bought him before university, I wouldn't have spent fourteen years in a classroom."

"He can't think. And Alphie can't teach anyone to think, anymore than they did back on Earth."

Alphie cocked his head, the programmed response to hearing his name.

"Are you saying my university experience was worthless?"

"I'm saying if I wanted someone to spout facts to me, I'd ask Alphie."

John shook his head. Even with a record setting IQ, his daughter still argued like the teenager she was.

"Are you going to take your move?"

"Queen-rook to E5-circle. Checkmate." A record setting IQ was no competition for years of studying historic matches.

"Play again? There's nothing else to do."

She had a point. The Atlantic was the point Explorer, ahead of the nearest ship by a quarter of a light-hour. Their job was to broadcast a welcoming message in all directions. The Explorers behind them were to pick up any response. So far only the Atlantic performed its part of the mission.

"Let's play. Maybe I'll finally beat you twice in a row."

"Doubt it."

"Sir," interrupted Alfie, "we've received a transmission, dated today, timed ninety-four hundred."

"What colony uses that time system?"

"None in the database, sir. However it seems to align with Earth time thirteen hundred."

John checked his watch. 13:03.

"I told you not to trust to machines," said Tika. "There's no way another Explorer could have gotten a message here so fast."

"Alphie, play message."

Alphie opened his mouth but kept it still. The voice that proceeded slid over the android's pseudoplastic lips, filling the room like a fog. "Slik fathol vihn elluj u jid ruhz."

John started toward the cockpit. He felt his heart pounding in his fingertips. "Alphie, follow."

Tika hurried behind the android. "Dad, it's probably just another Explorer playing a joke. Andrew has been threatening to do just that."

"The Consul would court marshal and excommunicate anyone who did that. Even your gorgeous Andrew. Alphie, identify language of previous transmission."

"Unknown, sir."

"Can you translate?"

"Calculating most likely meaning currently. Will be complete in forty-three seconds."

"It's just one of the other Explorers speaking gibberish."

"Shut up for a moment! Aren't you always saying the simplest explanation is most often true?"

"In this case-"

John cut her off. "Stop trying to win the argument, and let's figure this out."

Tika bit her lip, glared. She ran back down the corridor.

John shook his head. He shouldn't have snapped. Tika was aware of her need to be right all the time, and she'd been trying to overcome it. But overcoming flaws was tough when trapped with your dad for months at a time. At least when he snapped like that. He'd apologize in a moment.

First, he'd check that Tika was right about the foreign transmission.

John entered the cockpit.

The father-daughter conflict drained from his mind.

Through the view screen loomed a ship a dozen times the size of the Atlantic. Its sides rolled in places and broke into jagged edges in others, as if formed by flowing water. Amidst shadows something darted along the sides, but when John focused on the movement he saw nothing.

"This she-wolf is a gift for my kinsman." The sounds came from Alphie's mouth, but the words seemed to come from the ship in front of them.

"What does that mean?"

"I cannot identify meaning, only terminology."

"Alphie, identify neighboring craft."

"Unknown, sir."

"Report any known facts about craft."

Another shadow danced through a crevice in the ship's hull.

"Unable to connect with central databases."

"What? Why?"

"Error at ship end, not android end."

John thought he noticed a shadow fly away from the strange ship. Unnerved, he checked the airlocks, then cursed himself a fool. If something had breached the airlocks, the alarms would be blaring. "Hell of a time for a malfunction. Alphie, repeat message back to craft."

"Unable to connect with ship computer."

"Can you connect manually?"

"Yes sir."

"Then do it!"

Alphie plugged into the terminal.

"Dad?" Tika's voice came through the intercom system. "My lights just cut off. Are you in the airlock?"

"Tika, I want you up here."

Alphie spoke. "Unable to send message. Transmitter error."

"Tika?"

"I can fix the transmitter, Dad."

The transmitter was between Tika's quarters and the airlock. The ship was supposed to be secure, but John wasn't taking anything for granted. This was his daughter. "STOP!" he shouted into the transmitter.

"Dad?" Her voice wavered.

"Come to the cockpit. Now. Run." He paused only a moment, then sprinted out to meet her. The corridor declared normalcy, but something felt wrong. Tika ran into view from around the corner. She slowed when she saw him. "Keep running," he urged, out of breath. John grabbed her arm and pulled her back up the hallway. He strained to hear over the thudding of their boots, not sure what he was listening for. Images of cold mandibles grabbing him from behind, or worse, snatching away Tika, insistently clawed at his mind. And then they reentered the cockpit and he closed the door behind them. He wrapped his arms around his daughter. "You're okay. We're okay now."

Tika pulled away and swiped her bangs out of her face. John noticed her expression of fear pushed aside like the unruly hair. "What's wrong with Alphie?" She quickly busied herself examining the android, willfully ignoring the imposing hulk on the view screen.

John stepped toward the picture. The ship ahead floated still, but something still danced in the crevices. John leaned in closer to the view window. Darkness swirled, drawing him toward it. Idly, he wondered how Tika would feel about dawning their suits and exploring the landscape of the new craft. Actually, the suits would only get in the way.

"Dad?"

He should just leave her behind. This discovery should belong only to him. Why share it? It might be nice to never tell anyone. Just drift over and spend an eternity–

"Dad!"

John jerked away.

"What is that, Dad?" Her worried expression was highlighted by her bangs dangling back in her face. She looked like she had as a toddler, crying after a nightmare. Her mother had been better at handling those situations.

"The sender of the message, presumably. This she-wolf is a gift for my kinsman."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Alphie spoke again. "Power failure in second level."

Tika stared at the ship. "Did it send the message, or is it the wolf? Alphie, give the five next likely translations for 'she-wolf.'"

"Dingo, silent, scavenger, death, and 'one with fangs.'"

"Alphie," said John, "lock all doors between cockpit and second level."

"Did you respond?" asked Tika.

"I tried to play the message back to them."

Tika turned to him. "But you don't even know what it means. What if it was establishing dominance? You might have just issued a challenge."

A deep, resounding cry echoed through the Atlantic. The cockpit shook.

"Identify location of noise," said Tika.

"Two-hundred yards in front of the Atlantic, ma'am."

"Noise can't travel through space."

"Alphie," asked John, "are all of your systems functioning normally?"

"Negative sir. Due to unknown errors, all information recorded by the ship's sensors, or retrieved from the ship's databases has a forty-three percent chance of being inaccurate."

"Including that statement?" Tika asked. She grinned, but she clenched her hands uncertainly.

"Yes ma'am."

"Where was that noise, then?" John asked, already knowing the answer.

"Dad, look!"

A thousand shadows leapt from the irregular hull of the foreign ship and flew toward the Atlantic.

"Raise all asteroid deflectors! Seal the airlocks!" The view screen went black. Tiny echoes danced through the cockpit, like rain on an atmospheric cruiser roof.

"We have to tell the other Explorers," said Tika.

Good, thought John. Determination was an antidote to fear. Still. "I'm not opening that door."

Darkness filled the room.

"Power failure on first level. Establishing back-up power."

A faint red glow emanated from the emergency lights. Outside the cockpit something shuffled, whispered.

"Dad, we have to get a message to the other Explorers."

"The transmitter is down."

"Send Alphie."

"He's a voice for the computer. He can't fix the transmitter. And that's assuming whatever they did to it can be fixed."

"So what do we do, wait?"

He had to keep up hope. "I'll see what I can do. Alphie, is there enough power to reboot the ship computer?"

"Unknown, sir."

"Try it."

The emergency lights cut off, leaving the room devoid of both light and sound. The emptiness of space seeped into the cockpit without the buzzing of the lights. Then a small viewscreen cut on. John stepped to it immediately.

"What are you doing?" asked Tika.

"I'm trying to shift power to the transmitter, but I don't know that I'll be able to." He pulled up a live image that should have shown the transmitter on top of the hull of the Atlantic. As the image appeared, dark spots on the ship slinked out of view.

"How did they know we were watching?" Tika touched John's shoulder. "Daddy? How did they know?"

"I don't know." But that didn't seem as pressing as another question. Where was the transmitter? There should have been a two foot antennae reaching out of the Atlantic. With the dark image, John could not make out where the antennae had even been. Suddenly, a blur of dark shadow with dozens of darker eyes leapt toward the camera and the feed went dead.

Tika screamed, staggering away from the viewscreen. "Make them go away!" John tried to hold her, but she slapped at him. "Mom wouldn't have let this happen! Andrew wouldn't let this happen! I just want to go home," she sobbed, finally letting him pull her near. After a few moments she lifted her head. "We need a plan. What's our next step?"

John searched for an answer. They were miles from everything – light-years from anything. He was just a man in a hunk of metal hurling through a vacuum. But this was his little girl. "We'll think of something."

Tika took a deep breath and stepped toward the door. She put her ear against the metal. "I don't hear anything. Maybe they've gone."

Something exploded in the hallway and Tika fell backward. Muffled shouts drifted into the cockpit. John dove to her side. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be fine. Isn't there some way to contact the fleet?" She lowered her voice. "Some way to contact Andrew?"

"I'm sorry. I know space travel. I know this ship. With the transmitter down, there's no way to send a message."

"Always knowledge with you. Always what you know." She bit her lip, thinking. "Those lights that you had trained on that...thing. The Atlantic has lights on all sides, right?"

John nodded.

Something shrieked. Tika jumped. The door rattled.

"But how do you send a message through lights? Dammit! Is there some way to adjust the wave lengths of the light?"

John laughed. Odd, he thought, to laugh when death was so near. "You really don't know? You've practically declared our solution."

Tika glared through tears. "Don't laugh at me, what is it?"

"Morse code? You don't know Morse code? Alphie, does the computer have Morse in its database?"

"Yes sir, but everything that travels from the database through me has-"

"Shut up and shut down, Alphie." The android rested his chin on his chest. His eyes closed.

John stood at the computer, letting his memories from the pre-android days take over. Compose message. Choose language. Archaic codes. Morse. He opened the index for Morse and toggled the master switch for the outside lights.

"What are you broadcasting?"

"Danger. Alien craft hostile." He ordered the computer to repeat and loop the light pattern.

They sat on the floor, waited. Without telling her, John positioned them so that when something burst through the door, he could swiftly push Tika behind him. If. If something came. Not when.

"Andrew and I talked about having a family," Tika whispered. Her eyes stared at nothing. John wondered how aware she was. "After our mission, of course. Space is no place for children."

Grandkids would have been a nice adventure.

The metal of the door creaked from some unseen pressure.

"His parents are rich, you know. He said they could set us up in a little cottage on Earth. Can you believe that? Earth."

John didn't interrupt. Everyone's last moments should be happy, even if it meant allowing the mind to slip away.

He gave himself the same privilege, drifting into the philosophy class where he had met Tika's mother. Two cultures meeting for the first time. Are we the insects or the exterminators?

John held Tika closer. He prayed for a different option, but the things outside the cockpit halted his prayers abruptly.

The Easement Through Which We Pass

A muddy boy sprinted through the waist-high weeds of the powerline easement that cut through the forest. Jacob figured it had to be the missing spelling-bee champ the radio was talking about, although, it was supposed to be two kids missing.

The boy spotted Jacob and ran towards him, still fifty feet away. Close enough to see the panic on the kid's face, but the creeping thorns of the easement made it slow going.

Jacob shut off the weed whacker and jogged to the truck to grab his shirt--the one with the Park Ranger badge on the front pocket. Sweat and grass stains might spook the boy a little less if they were accompanied by a brass symbol of authority. He grabbed a bottle of Mountain Blast Gatorade and headed to meet the boy.

The power company was due to cut the seeding grass and rotten blackberries on the swath that cut through the oak, pine, and maple forest of Hungry Mother State Park, but they'd kept delaying maintenance of their easement through state land, and now the Marion County Bicentennial festival was coming up, so Jacob volunteered to make a clearing where the easement passed by Picnic Shelter E.

He preferred the Ranger duties that left him alone with the woods.

Although, he usually did his best to avoid this unnatural trail with its overhanging powerlines.

He'd barely hacked apart space to sneeze, so he held his arms above the brambles as he entered the brush. It'd be easy to carve a path if he had his machete. But the head Ranger made him leave it at home, said it scared some of the park guests. More reason to enjoy the solitude of the forest, where a tool was just a tool.

He detoured around a blackberry bush and lost sight of the boy. With each step, his boots caught on thick grass and greenbrier thorns. The branches of young maples scratched at his cheeks. He navigated using the powerlines overhead, six slack lines down the middle of a streak of gray sky that cut through the treetops.

Jacob called to the boy. "I'm here. Watch out for thorns!" He stopped to listen. Crickets played repeated notes, over which a thrush sang. Something crunched across dead foliage somewhere to his left. Hard to tell what, since a rowdy squirrel rustled as loudly as a careful black bear.

The grass ahead of him shook, and out burst the boy.

He was around nine, and skinny as a sapling. His chest heaved in sobbing gasps. On his face and arms, wet leaves were plastered against irregular scratches. A deeper gash on his forehead had clotted but not scabbed. Neon yellow mud caked his t-shirt and jeans. Jacob didn't know what sort of clay or deposits could turn mud that sort of bright yellow. The unnatural color and grainy texture reminded Jacob of Play-doh.

"Where you been?" Jacob uncapped the Gatorade and squatted to meet the boy. "The radio said you got your folks worrying up a storm."

He didn't know whether to jump into Jacob's arms, or collapse onto the trampled grass. To distract and hydrate the boy, Jacob offered him a deep swig of blue sugary beverage. "I don't remember what they said your name was."

"Caden," he said between gulps. He rocked from foot to foot, glanced at the ground, the same anxious look of the hundreds of in-over-their-heads hikers Jacob had seen over his career. Searching for a place to sit and rest their aching legs, but dreading climbing back onto their feet.

He leaned over the boy to inspect the gash on his forehead. It would need to be cleaned, but for now the clotted blood was doing its job. "I do remember the news said there was two that took off before the sun even came up, carrying nothing but compasses and canteens."

That jumpstarted the waterworks. Caden's tears and snot dripped into the Gatorade. "Lupita got stuck."

Jacob pushed the bottle down from the boy's drool. He'd expected to hear that the other adventurer had gotten homesick a little quicker. Not that a little girl might be in danger. "Is she hurt?"

He'd seen enough movies and sometimes national news broadcasts where a kid got lost in the woods, and it had happened a few times at the park over the years. The media loved that story so much they'd tried to blend the images--a scared kid in a tattered coat, a gloomy forest--force them into people's minds and make it seem natural.

Truth was, there was nothing natural about a child by itself in the woods. A doe didn't let her fawn wander off alone. You saw a black bear cub, you knew close by was his mama. Only human kids had the instinct, and only human mothers had today's electronic distractions, for children to go wandering off alone without a way to fend for themselves.

Appalachia didn't have too many predators that would take down a full grown man, but a copperhead's venom could brain damage a kid. A starving bobcat or an especially mean pack of coyotes might see a lost kid as a quick way to ease hunger pangs.

The boy's gaze drifted back into the weed.

"Caden." Jacob softened his voice for the repeated question, fearing the answer. "Is she hurt?"

Caden hesitantly shook his head. "I don't think so. She got her foot jammed in a tree."

"What happened? Can you show me where she is? How long ago did you leave her?" The questions swarmed out of Jacob's mouth. Emergencies always threw him for a loop before he got his bearings. A nine-year-old lost in the woods could hurt herself in all sorts of ways. And if she was stuck in a tree, who could say if she'd cut off circulation to her foot, and was slowing feeling more and more pain.

Panic welled on Caden's expression, mirroring Jacob's tone. Jacob counted to three then asked the most medically important question. "What's her foot look like?"

"It was kinda turning red."

"Damn." The word came out before he could stop it.

"Is that bad? Did I need to stay with her?" Compassion filled Caden's voice. That was one thing the woods couldn't offer.

"No, you did right going for help. We just have to find her quick or it might hurt her foot." Truth was, it could require amputation if they didn't move quick. "How long since you left her?"

"I don't know." Caden stood tall to get a better look down the path he'd formed in the brush. "We followed the powerlines past the rock road and then I couldn't tell where we were."

He must have meant the gravel fire access road a half mile up. If they were that close, she couldn't have been stuck for long. "It's gonna be fine," Jacob reassured him.

Caden visibly relaxed. Jacob hadn't realized how tense the boy had looked, reacting to Jacob's fear that the girl was hurt.

He remembered how disconcerting it was as a boy when he saw his mother afraid for the first time. One of the boyfriends who passed in and out of her life had called and threatened to force his way back in. She called 911, and then she and Jacob hid in the closet and prayed that the police would get there before the ex-boyfriend.

Jacob stood straight and smiled at Caden, trying not to look afraid. Wind stirred the grass around them. "We'll go find Lupita. She'll be fine."

Jacob led Caden by the hand back to the truck. He radioed to the head ranger that he'd found one of the missing kids with mild injuries, and he was showing Jacob where the other missing kid was stuck, with possibly worse injuries. "Better call the ambulance, just in case."

Jacob sat Caden in the front seat of the pickup. He wiped at the yellow mud on the boy's face. It was cold, and almost felt like a mild electric shock when he touched it. "Where'd you get this all over you?" He buckled the boy in.

Caden sniffed. "It's mud patches like this all over, past the rock road."

Jacob sighed. This boy didn't have a clue where he was, let alone where he'd been. Under the powerlines, without adult trees to suck up the nutrients, undergrowth grew too thick for much mud to gather.

"I lost my dad's watch." Caden held one wrist. "It had a timer, and compass, and everything. It was his favorite."

"He'll be so happy to see you he won't even care."

"Is he coming?"

"The other rangers are calling your parents. They'll be here when we get back from getting your friend. Lupita, you said her name was?"

Caden nodded, and Jacob shut him in the cab. The slamming door quieted the birds and crickets for a moment. Jacob looked down the powerline easement, at the treeless undergrowth that rolled over hills for a quarter mile and then dropped out of sight. The powerlines stretched from steel tower to steel tower. On either side, swaying tree lines faced each other, looming over the undergrowth that had no right to exist without the dominant trees.

Somewhere down the other direction was a coal plant, or maybe that had shut down and been replaced by a hydroelectric dam. What lay in the direction Caden had come from, Jacob didn't know.

He hated the easement; preferred the natural feeling of the forest with its trees. When he was out surveying or checking hunting licenses, with dried leaves crunching under his boots, and the scent of budding leaves wafting under his nose, he felt embraced. Protected. He didn't give much thought to how far these woods might go, even though some part of his mind knew they extended dozens or hundreds of miles in every direction.

The powerline easement, on the other hand, demanded you consider where it led. It was an unnatural slash through nature. The power company had shown up with bulldozers and set off through the woods, tearing down any life that reached high enough to entangle their buzzing wires, battling towards some destination now long forgotten.

No wonder two kids had been curious. The surprising thing was that it didn't happen more often.

Inside the cab, Caden wiped snot on his mud-encrusted sleeve. Poor kid.

Jacob threw the weedwhacker into the truck bed, jumped in the cab, and started the engine. He threw it into second to head along the dirt road that intersected with the gravel fire road Caden mentioned.

He hurried not just for the girl who was probably terrified--imagine getting your ankle stuck in a tree trunk in the middle of a powerline easement--but so Caden could get back to his parents and forget his whole adventure. Jacob could pass in and out of his life, and he could go right back to fourth grade mischief.

"Lupita sits next to me in math." Caden craned his neck to look through the back window of the cab. They jolted through a washed out ditch, banging his bloodied head against the glass. He winced. "I wanna just wait for my dad."

Jacob realized he rightly should have checked for a concussion. Anything that caused a gash that deep on the boy's forehead must have hit hard. It was stupid, forgetting to check.

"You'll see him right quick, I promise you. Let's go gather up Lupita, first."

They skidded onto the fire road. Jacob pumped the brake, kicking up gravel, then gunned it toward the powerlines. Gray oaks with their sprawling branches kept back the clouded sunlight. The summer undergrowth lurked in perpetual dusk.

This wasn't like the forests from out west that they showed in the movies, where four men could walk shoulder-to-shoulder between the trees. This was an Appalachian forest, where tree trunks were lone chutes, bursting up out of the saplings, bushes, and downed branches that made a walk in the woods less a relaxing jaunt and more a workout for your machete-swinging arm.

When the canopy gave way to the powerline easement, the undergrowth did not.

The fire road, maintained in case of wildfire so trucks could strike deep at the heart of a blaze, wandered through the growth. It reentered the trees somewhere on the other side of the powerlines, where it headed up a mountainside.

Jacob parked the truck. He got out and went around to Caden's door. The crickets were going crazy out here, less than a quarter mile from the picnic shelter. Blackberries, greenbrier vines, and grass encroached on the gravel, turning the fire road into the lumberjack version of Moses' Red Sea miracle.

Inside the truck, Caden stuck his head up like a turtle assessing a threat.

Jacob opened the passenger door. "Which way is Lupita?"

Caden pointed toward where they'd started.

"No son, that's where we came from. You said it was the other side of the gravel road."

Caden squinted against the afternoon sun, blinding even through the clouds. He walked to edge of the gravel, tugged at a honeysuckle vine which made the whole plant shiver, then walked other side of the road. "I meant the other rock road."

"This is the only one for miles. Where do go from here?" The worrisome thing was that in undergrowth this thick, you either found a trail, cut a trail, or slowly stomped down the greenery. Even for a kid Caden's size, the path he took should be an obvious hole through the brush.

Jacob sauntered up and down the road, from tree line to tree line. There wasn't a single broken branch or squished vine. No evidence the boy had passed through.

Caden sniffed the air. "The honeysuckle smells sweeter here than where Lupita got stuck. It smelled kinda rotten over there."

"It shouldn't be dying anywhere until September." Jacob craned his neck to spot any trails that started farther back from the road. Nothing. "What did you smell over by her? Blackberries, maybe? Those can smell tart." Not that it would narrow anything down too much. There were blackberries and raspberries all over the forest, no matter how often the rangers ripped them up, or sprayed them, or burned them.

"I don't know," whined Caden.

"Is there anything you do know?" spat Jacob. "It's been, what, twenty minutes? Half an hour? How'd you forget where she is?"

The boy's tears started back up. He ran to the truck.

"Dammit, I'm sorry," Jacob headed after him. He hadn't been fair. Even Jacob got turned around sometimes, and he spent six days a week out here.

Caden was already in the passenger seat when Jacob got back behind the wheel.

He kicked himself for snapping. The last thing a scared little boy needed was an adult chewing him out for being a scared little boy. Jacob knew that firsthand. He still remembered how his Walkman and Tom Petty cassette shattered against the sidewalk when his mom knocked it out of his hand, twenty-eight years ago, because he'd come home from the grocery store with chicken breast instead of chicken thighs, and chicken breast wasn't on sale. That's when he decided that Mom's boyfriends weren't the only ones who could pass on out of her life.

"I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm sorry. We'll find your friend." Jacob patted Caden's shoulder. His skin bowed inwards like a tired soda can.

"Ow." Caden jerked away. He rubbed the spot Jacob had touched. "I bumped my arm on the tree where Lupita got stuck."

Jacob wasn't sure what he'd just felt. Caden's shoulder had felt hollow for a second there. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his brow. It must have been his shirt blowing loose over a skinny arm. The boy was skin and bones. One morning wasn't enough to get skinny; this boy wasn't eating much at home.

"Here's what we're gonna do." Jacob turned the truck around. "We'll drive back to where I found you. If your dad has shown up yet, then great. You can go home. If not, can you show me the way back through the brush?"

Caden nodded.

There should be a trail there that Caden made stamping back through the brush. They should have followed it in the first place, but Jacob had thought he'd made it past the gravel road. The adventurous pair must have covered less ground then they'd imagined.

The drive back felt laced with wasted time. Jacob kept picturing Lupita's purple foot. Probably going number by the second.

They turned off the gravel fire road, and down towards Picnic Shelter E. A blue Subaru and another Park Services truck were parked by the shelter. Jacob didn't see anyone nearby. Must have been hikers, and summer volunteers clearing trash. He could use more eyes to search for Lupita, but he didn't see them anywhere.

He radioed in to the head ranger again to ask if anyone was coming to help with the search. The response came that Caden's parents should be there soon. The Captain said he was waiting for the Marion County police at the front office, and then he'd show them the shelter where they'd start the search.

Jacob looked at Caden. As soon as the boy saw his parents, he'd cling to their legs and never let go. Jacob needed the boy's help in case his trail got hard to spot. If Lupita's foot was turning colors, then every minute counted. "Come on, let's jog on up there a little ways, and you can show me where Lupita is."

Caden shrank in his seat.

"You're not afraid are you?" He tried to say it with an encouraging tone. Not that Jacob could blame him if he was. He didn't want to dive into that tangled web of plants any more than the boy did.

Caden shook his head. "A little, but I want to help."

They got out of the truck again. Again, Jacob wished he'd thought to bring a machete. He grabbed a hatchet and a bowsaw from the truck. He led the way, with Caden following next to him, cradling the Gatorade at his chest. The blue drink sloshed in the plastic bottle. Its bright color looked at home next to the neon yellow mud on Caden's face.

The cut into the brush Jacob had accomplished that morning looked sad compared to what was left to do. The grass, brambles, and other flora were chaotically thick, a stark wall marking the edges of the clumps of fallen vines and branches that had succumbed to Jacob's weed whacker.

He led Caden to where his conquered space met the wild growth. He'd trampled through grass to get to the boy when he'd first seen him, which left behind a shoulder-width path that extended five feet into the brush, then shrank to meet the trail Caden had created.

Jacob pushed aside encroaching stalks of grass with the saw. "How long did you run after Lupita got stuck?" He asked, not expecting Caden to remember.

"A long time. Longer than when we do the mile in gym class."

No easy way to convert jogging around a track to sprinting through brush. "You let me know when you think we're getting close." He was afraid that yelling for the girl might panic Caden, and wanted to hold off on that disaster for as long as possible. Besides, there was something disconcerting about yelling through the powerline easement when you couldn't see but a few feet ahead of you, all while the strip of open sky above wouldn't let you forget you were trudging down an endless path.

The first hundred yards were easy. They walked through stalks of grass that brushed Jacob's cheeks. The path took them around impassable rhododendrons with their heavy leaves and thick branches. "You lucked out and missed the worst of the blackberry bushes," Jacob told Caden. His voice sounded muted, like the wild space between him and the tree line had swallowed it up.

After ten minutes, they reached a young copse of sumacs. The squat trees seemed to gather themselves before reaching crookedly for the powerlines above. At first, Jacob didn't recognize the leafy vines twisted around the narrow sumac trunks and over the ground between them. He bent down to pluck off a leaf. A thorn pricked his finger. "It's just greenbrier."

"What?" asked Caden.

He sucked at the puncture in his skin. "You probably just call them 'thorns.' Deer love the taste of the leaves, so you only ever see the naked vines."

"Why don't the deer eat these ones?"

"You got me." Jacob stomped down errant vines so Caden could step over them. "How far now, do you think?"

"Maybe close," said Caden.

"Maybe," muttered Jacob. He pressed on, pushing branches out of his way while trying to avoid letting them snap back into Caden's face.

Jacob tried to estimate how far they'd gone. They should be coming up on the gravel fire road soon.

"Tell me if you see my dad's watch. He doesn't know I borrowed it." Caden's voice jostled as he jogged to keep up. "It's got a rubber strap, and a big computer face."

"I'm sure his watch is the last thing on his mind," said Jacob.

A hollow crack echoed between the tree lines. Jacob stood straight, trying to figure out what made the sound. "Anywhere else in the woods I'd say it was a falling branch. But unless those powerlines grew a dead branch and then let it drop, that might have been your friend breaking free."

Caden shushed him.

Jacob was about to scold the boy, and then a roaring whisper charged up the powerline trail. It overtook them, a humid gust of wind that smelled of a freshly mown lawn. It whipped Jacob's clothes around him for no more than a second, and then passed by. The whispers faded.

"The hell was that?" breathed Jacob. He tried to classify it with anything he'd learned in undergrad meteorology. He couldn't.

"First you hear something break, then the wind comes," said Caden. "It happened this morning. Lupita thought it was fun."

"Yeah? And what'd you think?" Jacob bent sumac branches to see a little deeper into the grove. It had sounded like a trunk splitting. The power company had waited too long to clear their easement--probably over a year--but even that wasn't enough time to let something grow big enough to make that loud of a crack.

"It made me feel like a kindergartner. I want to see my dad."

"You will, champ. He'll probably be right by my truck by the time we get back." Jacob stepped off the trail. "Are you sure that's what you heard earlier? Could be Lupita over there, don't you think?"

"No." It was the firmest answer he'd given yet. "She's stuck in a tree."

"Now hold on." Jacob stepped back onto the trail. With a final glance back, he continued on. "She's in the woods, then? There's no trees big enough to get stuck under the powerlines."

Caden nodded. The Gatorade sloshed. "It's right before the steep ditch."

Jacob tried to picture it. "It's just the one tree?"

"By itself, yeah."

Jacob couldn't think of any ditch under the powerlines big enough to be called "steep."

He couldn't think of the last time he'd entered the easement, before today. It ran parallel to the main stretch of the park, so there usually wasn't reason to enter it. Even with that, there were lost dogs or surveying projects that would have taken him under it, but he always volunteered for other duties. It was strange to realize how much he'd been avoiding the whole strip of forest, cleared and then neglected.

As he wondered what that crack and gust were, he paid attention to that lingering unease, the same feeling that kept him away until now. The canyon of trees, the thick chlorophyll scent, it all felt too familiar.

"Let's keep moving. You said she's close. How close?"

"We still have to cross the creek," said Caden.

Now Jacob knew the boy was confused. "There's no creek passes under the powerlines. At least not in the park."

"Then I guess it's a stream," said Caden. "That's where Lupita lost her shoe."

Jacob crouched down in front of Caden. He smelled rotting mud as he crouched, like the stench had pooled around his knees. "Do you smell that?"

Caden nodded.

"How long have you been smelling it?"

"Since right after the wind."

A smell that stayed low to the ground could mean a gas leak, except there weren't any gas lines through the park.

"Listen, son. Where's this creek you're talking about?"

"It's right under where the powerlines get all wiggly. By the tree."

Jacob looked at Caden's pupils. They looked normal. Weren't you supposed to be able to spot a concussion by shining a light in someone's eyes? Jacob was at a loss. The kid was spouting nonsense. If the radio hadn't mentioned two kids missing, Jacob might doubt Lupita was ever with him at all. There was a slim chance a creek up the hill had diverted and started running across the easement, but there wasn't a chance in hell it happened right where the powerlines "got wiggly."

This wasn't working. Lupita's foot might need saving, and Jacob was following around a little boy with shell shock. They should head back, then work with the police to organize a search party for Lupita. They'd at least learned that she'd been in the park, and probably under the powerlines. That would probably be enough to find her before dark. Maybe soon enough to prevent amputation.

"Let's go see if your dad has shown up." Jacob rubbed mud off Caden's face.

Caden looked longingly back the way they'd came. This trail through the thin trees didn't seem wide enough for them to have passed through. Crooked branches with sparse leaves crisscrossed the way--more than Jacob remembered pushing aside. Squirrels or rabbits played somewhere in the brush.

"I think Lupita's just ahead," said Caden. "Past the creek and some blackberries, there's the tree. Maybe under that tower." He pointed to the next steel tower.

Jacob sighed. He was ready to get back to ignoring the easement. "You said the tree was under where the powerlines were wobbly. We can see the lines past that tower. I don't see anything shaking."

Caden squeezed the bottle against his chest. "Maybe it's the next tower."

Jacob didn't want to fight another hundred yards through this wild growth, chasing after the confused delusions of a nine-year-old.

"I didn't see the wobbly lines until I was under them." Caden tightened the lid on the Gatorade. He hadn't taken another sip. "I think Lupita is probably thirsty."

Jacob relented. Really, it didn't matter what wobbly lines or yellow mud Caden thought he remembered. As long as he was right about how far up the easement to go, they could find Lupita. "We'll go the next tower. If we can't see the tree from there, then we head back so you can tell the police where to look."

Caden took the lead with more confidence. Jacob worried for a second that he should be the one to go first in case of danger, but it was better to keep him in sight. And away from any branches snapping back after Jacob pushed through them.

They emerged from the sumacs and leafy greenbrier. A chorus of chirper frogs greeted them. It had been among the many noises of the forest, robbed of their echo by the missing canopy, but muffled by the thick brush. Now the chorus sang to Jacob, entirely unimpeded.

He yanked Caden back to him by the shoulder, prompting a yelped protest. "Hold on." He tried to digest what he was seeing.

On first glance, it was the two tallest blackberry bushes he'd ever seen. Caden's trail continued between them. Except the feet that had crushed down the vines and brambles couldn't belong to a child, or even an average adult. The blackberries couldn't have been crushed by feet at all. It looked like boulders the size of his F-150 had come crashing out of the sky, clearing the way by forcing the vines and thorns into the mud.

Nothing in the easement was that big.

A stream trickled from clearing to clearing, pooling among the shallow craters of broken vines, then disappearing back under the brambles.

Jacob stepped toward the sight that truly unsettled him.

Around the edges of each oblong mudpit, among the scattered thorns that peeked up from beneath the puddles and muck, hopped hundreds of treefrogs.

Their chirps reverberated like miniature screams.

"What the hell is this?" breathed Jacob. Treefrogs were supposed to be nocturnal. They did most of their breeding--and thus, most of their chirping to each other--at dusk and dawn.

And they were supposed to be in trees, goddammit. Not in the one strip of the park without adult trees.

"They didn't chase me before," said Caden. "I think it's okay."

Jacob followed the boy, stepping carefully. Blackberry thorns wouldn't puncture his boots, but he didn't want frog guts smeared across the leather. As they passed through each muddy clearing, the chirping enveloped them.

Past the third spot, the bushes crested over a hill. "I think Lupita's over there."

"Is the fire road over there?" They should have passed it by now.

"The other one is." Caden scrambled into a run.

Jacob hurried after him. "What other road?" He splashed through a puddle. What he hoped was murky water splatter against his ankles. He could see the next powerline tower rise up far beyond the hill--at least another hundred feet. They weren't there yet, and Jacob wanted Caden in close reach. "Slow down!" he shouted as Caden disappeared down the other side of the hill.

He stumbled up the hill, tripped on a vine, then righted himself at the tip of the hill.

The frogs behind him stopped chirping. It left a silence only interrupted by soft wind pressing through the brush.

The undergrowth stopped, replaced by mud and sparse weeds. The hill continued downward, and far ahead where it rose again, wild undergrowth resumed its annexation of the easement, but Jacob couldn't see the spot where the dirt gave way back to life. The hill dropped too sharply, keeping the low point of the valley out of sight.

Not thirty feet in front of him, the angled skeleton of the steel powerline tower pierced up into the emptiness of the easement. Head in the sky, confused how he'd reached the tower so quickly, Jacob stepped forward. His boots crunched on rocks.

A road of fist-sized rocks started at his feet, and continued under the tower, then on down the hill.

Caden interrupted his confusion. "There she is!"

Farther down the hill past the steel skeleton, the rock road curved to avoid a dead willow tree that swayed in little jerking motions. The dangling branches were stiff and missing their leaves, although the dirt around it was bare as well.

It had been at least year since Jacob had walked the powerline trail, but not more than three years. There definitely hadn't been any ravine like this. For a diverted creek to dig that deep into the dirt, it would either need a couple centuries, or it would need to carry as much water as the New River. Nothing like that passed through the easement. And yet, obviously, something had dug out this ravine.

Caden turned back to yell at Jacob. "Come on. She's under there." He raced toward the shelter of the tree.

"Wait!" bellowed Jacob. He ran after the boy, then hesitated. The sudden stop sent his boots sliding through the mud, cutting divots into the brown dirt that exposed canary yellow clay beneath. He thrust his hand downward to catch himself. The clay shocked him, enough to force his joints rigid. He grunted at the surprise more than the pain.

He yanked his hand out of the mud. It stuck to his skin and shocked him in pulsing bursts. He brushed the muck off with frantic swipes. He scanned the sky above him for any drooping lines, anything to justify electricity in the mud. Nothing. He stood back up.

Caden had disappeared inside the tree's dead branches.

Jacob called his name. "Is she there?" He listened hard for a response, willing the boy to reappear with his friend so Jacob wouldn't have to follow him through the lilting curtain of foilage.

He heard voices. An urgent, steady rambling. A sharper voice interjected sporadically. The rambling continued strong.

Jacob stepped downhill, leaning on his bowsaw for support. "What are you saying? Is she still stuck?" He passed the steel tower. He glanced again at the powerlines. There was little solace in knowing that those lines led back to his truck, back to the picnic shelter, back to safety, because they also led in the opposite direction, down the easement, where they marked the center between the tree lines and they hung overtop the wild growth. To look at the lines was to remind himself that there was barely passable terrain beneath them, and that those lines continued out of sight, for miles into the unknown.

The easement continued to the edge of the park, on past it, for how far? Jacob didn't know. And here, somewhere beneath the point where the hill sloped so steep it dropped out of sight, something passed through the easement.

Jacob called to Caden again. He slipped and staggered to the dead willow. A crack echoed from somewhere down the hill. Jacob crouched, braced himself. He expected to see a gust tear through the brush from the other side of the ravine. Instead, he watched a wave of disturbed foliage explode from the bottom up the far side just as an identical wave came up towards him. It shook the tree, rattling the dead branches, then slammed into him, breaking over his skin to coat it in a humidity ripe with freshly cut grass. Not grass. Azaleas, like the bushes in front of his mom's house, twenty-eight years ago.

The rambling and interjecting voices grew louder.

It took every bit of courage inside him to run to the willow instead of turn tail back the way he'd come.

He fell only once more, and then reached the dangling branches. Even without leaves, they were too thick to see through. Jacob reached in with the saw to push them aside like a rickety curtain.

Underneath the branches of the dead willow, a thousand ankle-high, living willows grew. They weren't saplings so much as bonsai trees. They basked in sunlight filtered through their deceased parent--sunlight turned gray and glowing. At the center of the miniature forest, the mottled trunk of the mother willow rose above the rest. A split ran down its side, widening towards the base.

Caden's legs poked out of the split, kicking violently.

The steady mumbling continued, the two voices muted inside this deciduous cavern. It wasn't the kids--it was someone down the ravine.

Caden's legs disappeared down to the knee. Jacob lunged toward him.

Caden's knee found purchase against the trunk. He lurched backwards just as Jacob reached him.

Jacob grabbed the boy by the back of his shirt and pulled.

Another voice, this one from the tree, a little girl's soft sob. Jacob pressed a foot against the trunk. "Do you got her? I'm gonna pull you both out."

"Hold on," exhaled Caden, but Jacob was already pulling, staggering backwards a step at a time, careful not to trip over the bonsai willow grove.

Caden's head appeared, and then his arms. He gripped wrists with two smaller arms. Jacob lunged back, and Lupita appeared. Both children tumbled over each other to the ground.

Lupita sat up. Her dark brown hair was surprisingly clean, and her t-shirt and jeans didn't have a spot of mud. Head to toe, she was drenched.

Caden yanked her to her feet. "Let's go."

Jacob forced himself to ignore the voices from the ravine. "Wait. Are you okay, Lupita?" He knelt in front of her, pushed her hair back from her face. Water dripped down her cheeks and patted onto Jacob's knees. She didn't have a single scratch. Just walking through the brush had scraped the hell out of Jacob's arms, and that was through a path already forged.

The skin on both her feet was pristine. No bruising or swelling.

Lupita sniffed. She looked to Caden.

"He's okay," said Caden. "I brought him to help you."

She looked up and down at Jacob. He was probably a scary sight. Armed with a hatchet and saw, scratched and sweaty, and every muscle tight with fear. Adults were supposed to be the solution to fear, not share in it.

Lupita would have to suck it up.

The voices from beyond the willow grew louder.

"Let's go," said Jacob. He didn't like how the voices grew more distinct, like he could almost put names to them. Time to get back to the truck, and back to ignoring where the easement tugged at his memories.

"Caden, you lead the way back." He'd keep himself between the ravine and the children.

Caden took Lupita by the hand to tiptoe through the bonsai willows. Jacob followed close behind. As the kids pushed through the hanging branches, Jacob extended the bow saw again to keep the dangling dead wood from closing between them. He'd keep them in sight until they were safe in their parents' arms.

Outside the tree, they scrambled up the muddy hill, using the steel legs of the powerline tower where possible. Blackberry bushes hid the exact peak of the hill, but Caden led them toward crushed path.

Another voice from the ravine joined the first two, whispering over the rambler and the interjector. Jacob finally understood the words. They were the lyrics to Tom Petty songs, all from his shattered cassette, shouted and hissed without melody or rhythm.

Jacob froze. The angry lyrics and scent of azaleas propelled him back toward thoughts he thought he'd left far behind.

Lupita stopped and turned around. She peered around Jacob down the ravine. "Who's down there? They got really loud before you got here. I thought they'd all gone up the hill, but I guess some stayed behind."

Jacob frantically surveyed their surroundings, not sure what he was afraid to find. He climbed to where the mud gave way to blackberry vines, heard the chirper frogs resume their chorus, and pulled both kids close. "They came up out of the ravine?"

Lupita pressed her still-wet face into his side. "It sounded like it. What are they?"

"Probably campers." It was the most benign answer he could think of, and he knew it smelled like bullshit. "Both of you hold on to the back of my belt. We're gonna see how quick we can get back to my truck."

The kids tucked their fingers under his belt. He rushed into the blackberries, moving from crushed clearing to crushed clearing. Frogs squished under his boots. The kids stumbled behind him, but hung on. The voices quieted the farther they got from the ravine.

They cleared the blackberries and ran back into the sumac grove.

"Stay close to me and close your eyes," Jacob ordered. "Don't want any branches snapping back on you."

The thin branches scraped at his hands and face.

Someone yelled farther ahead on the trail. First, a quick bark of disapproval, then descending in rapid yelps. It cut off as suddenly as it began.

Jacob slid to a stop. Caden bumped into him. "Can we open our eyes?"

"No." Jacob couldn't tell how close the yelling had come from, but it wasn't as far back as the picnic shelter.

Something gold in the grass and greenbrier caught the sunlight. Keeping an eye down the trail, Jacob set down the hatchet to pick up a Park Ranger's badge.

He patted his front pocket. His own badge was still on his shirt. He pocketed the duplicate badge, picked the hatchet back up, and switched hands with the bow saw.

He wanted the hatchet in his strong hand.

"Okay kids," he whispered, "I'm gonna go really fast now. If I say 'run,' then you open your eyes and run past me all the way back to the truck, okay? Don't stop once you're there--keep on until you find another ranger."

Lupita sniffed. "Okay."

Caden tightened his grip on Jacob's belt. "Why? What's up ahead? Who was yelling?"

"It's nothing." Jacob tried to remember the last time he'd sharpened the hatchet blade. "The brush just gets really thick up ahead, and we might have to run one at a time."

Before Caden could argue, Jacob moved forward. He felt one of them stumble behind him, but both kept their grip. He held up the saw to push branches out of his face, and carried the hatchet above his shoulder, blade forward, ready to bring it down.

The young trees gave way to the thick, treeless brush of the easement. Crawling vines hooked around his ankles to make a ripping sound as he tore them up from the dirt. Tall grass whipped against his face. Lupita yelped in pain and let go of his belt. Without missing a beat, Jacob dropped the saw, grabbed her wrist, pulled her free of the thorns that had snagged her leg, and rushed on.

Something else gold glistened off the trail. Jacob ignored it.

"That's my dad's watch!" Caden let go of the belt.

Jacob wasn't willing to drop the hatchet. He stopped. "It's not his." Not anymore than the badge had been Jacob's. "Grab back ahold of my belt."

Caden stepped into the brush to reach the watch.

"Don't," pleaded Lupita.

Jacob whirled around, trying to spot any possible threat.

"I told you it's my dad's." Caden picked up the watch. "But it's not the one I lost."

A sharp crack sounded right on top of them. Caden crouched like it'd been gunfire. He disappeared beneath the grass.

"Get back here," ordered Jacob in his most terrifying, terrified voice.

"The wind's gonna come again," cried Lupita.

Caden scrambled back into view and grabbed back ahold of Jacob's belt.

"I don't want to feel it again," moaned Lupita.

Jacob ran forward, back through the brush.

The rustling wave of wind overtook them from behind.

They spilled out into the clearing.

Jacob staggered to a stop. Cut grass at his feet and its scent all around him. His truck parked nearby. The picnic shelter. The Subaru and second Park Ranger truck parked next to it.

They hadn't come nearly far enough. It was another hundred yards through the brush. Ten minutes of walking. And they'd ran back through it in thirty seconds.

Caden wandered toward the picnic shelter, with Lupita at his side. Jacob let them go. They probably needed the comfort of a man-made structure.

He turned back to the brush of the easement. He couldn't see five feet through it. He followed the powerlines with his eyes. He couldn't make out where the ground had risen and then sharply fell. In fact, the next tower was less than a hundred feet away. How had they walked so far to get to it?

Caden yelled over at the picnic shelter. Jacob ran to him. He was tugging on the door handle of the Subaru.

"This is my dad's car! He came to find me!" He rattled the gold watch.

Jacob pulled the badge out of his pocket. It wasn't a duplicate of his, the number was wrong. It was another ranger's.

"We have to go get him," said Caden.

Jacob stared into the brush, low dense plant life struggling between two walls of forest. He sat down on a picnic table. "We better wait for the cops."

The easement had already let them turn around once. Next time, it might insist they pass on through.

Underneath

Henry swept his flashlight around the cavern. A drip of water echoed. A thumbnail sliver of light above him emphasized the distance he had descended.

"Brian!" he called for his cousin. "Where'd you go?"

Brian stepped from under a rock shelf. "You finally made it. I was getting bored."

Irritation bubbled up. "Lay off. I'm punching over my weight here. There weren't many handholds."

Brian grinned. "How many?"

"I don't know."

Brian roared with laughter. "Like hell you don't! How many did you count?"

"I really don't know." Henry usually counted when he was nervous, but the descent had been...odd, somehow. "I came down here with you as a favor. Lay off a little bit."

An impressed whistle evolved into a high pitched growl.

"I said lay off. Quit fooling around."

"You're the one making weird noises," Brian said. "Come check this out."

Brian moved back under the shelf.

At an even higher pitch, like an old TV turning on, the growl returned. It morphed into a laugh.

Henry swallowed. "What are you laughing at?"

"See," Brian said, "this caving adventure is relaxing you already. You're even trying to play pranks. Now come on. I found some bones but I can't tell what they are."

Mine.

"There! What was that? Why did you say that?"

"Alright, it wasn't that funny to start with. Now it's just weird."

A clicking echoed around the slick stone walls. Henry turned his light to the floor. The pebbles covering the floor shook, clacking against each other.

Brian's light joined Henry's on the floor. "What the hell?"

The rocks convulsed more violently until they bounced several inches above the ground.

A cool wind rushed down the cave and under the shelf where Brian stood. A warm, moist wind flowed back out.

The rocks stilled.

Brian laughed. "That was fucking crazy."

The shelf collapsed. Brian disappeared underneath.

Henry panicked. He dove to his knees to scratch at the pile of dirt and stone. Kicked up dust reached down his throat. "Brian!"

"My arm is pinned." His voice was nearly drowned out by the thumping in Henry's chest. "And something's sitting on my leg."

"I'll get you out. Just hold on." He ran back to the rope hanging from the tiny sliver of light. "David! Get help! Brian's hurt!"

Slight fragments of the frantic conversation whirled above him. "Who's hurt?....Brian....Brian?.... call someone .... 911....I'm going down there."

David's voice again. "I'm coming down. Lynn's going for help."

Henry started to answer, but then Brian screamed. Henry scratched at the dirt and rock while Brian howled curses. Henry's fingers bled and Brian's shouts were accompanied by a high pitched gurgling. David arrived and they both dug. Men in uniforms arrived and helped Henry back to the top. Even at the surface he thought he could here Brian's cries. In the ambulance, his ears still rang.

* * *

"I'm here to see a Brian Andrews." Henry stood in the lobby of the hospital. The receptionist kept his eyes on his computer screen.

"Only family right now."

"I'm his cousin. I was there at his accident."

"I really don't memorize what happens to every patient."

"He was in the collapse in the cave."

The receptionist looked up. His eyes were black. "Ah. You must be Henry. Your cousin is on the fourth floor. Room four eighteen."

Henry backed away, staring at the empty gaze of the receptionist. He stepped around the corner and paused to catch his breath. That had not been real. The voice in the cave was his imagination. That man's eyes were his imagination. Just stress from the accident. The elevator dinged and an elderly couple stepped out. Henry stared at the ground and walked inside.

He counted to soothe himself. That usually worked. Eleven buttons. Seven leading to floors. Five with other functions. Wait, that wasn't right. He tried counting it out on his fingers. "Seven and five...eleven minus seven..." The numbers didn't come.

The doors slid open. The hallway before him stretched into darkness. Fog drifted out from the rooms, sliding along the tiled floor. Shadows danced among the mist.

Henry checked the floor indicator. Every number was lit.

Henry.

He jabbed a quivering finger at the button to close the doors.

Come to me, Henry.

The dancing shadows retreated into the rooms. The fog floated down. A pale light blinked on in one of the rooms at the far end of the hallway.

Don't leave me, Henry.

The elevator doors slid closed. It continued its ascent and Henry collapsed in relief.

* * *

Henry rocked back and forth, reading the business section. The rest of the paper could be insane, but he could always find comfort in the stocks. Brian's chest rose and fell. The hum of the hospital's fluorescent lights formed a dissonance with the beeping of Brian's monitors.

Brian sat up and stared at Henry. "I finished building the foundation last night. It will be very big."

"Really?" This was the third time Brian had mentioned building in his dreams.

"Yes. It should go much faster now that the foundation is finished. And I've been rewarded."

"Who rewarded you?" The nurse said not to play along, but Henry had found that humoring him was the quickest way back to quiet.

"She told me to call her Bithiah. I'm building it for her."

"Who is Bithiah?" It was bad enough that Brian was delusional. He didn't need some other mental patient furthering his fantasies.

"That's the wrong question. Ask me what the right question is."

"What's the right question?"

"What my reward was."

"What was your reward?"

The nurse entered and checked the monitors. She bent down behind the bed. When she rose again she had no face.

Henry gasped and leapt from his chair

"Is everything all right?" asked the nurse, her face now ordinary.

He gaped. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"So is your friend, according to these numbers. There are different ways of measuring 'fine.'"

Brian grinned.

"I'll be back around to check on him later."

Henry sat silently for several minutes. "I think I'll go find something to drink."

He needed to speak to Brian's doctor. If this Bithiah was another patient, Henry wanted her kept away from his cousin.

He walked past eight rooms, went down four stories on the elevator, and stopped in the lobby. The receptionist, feet propped on the counter, watched Family Feud.

"Excuse me," said Henry. "My cousin is up on the fourth floor. I'd like to speak to his doctor."

"Name?"

"Henry Brown. Well, his name is Brian Andrews."

"I'm afraid I can't just give out that information. Only immediate family."

"He doesn't have immediate family. I'm the only one that visits him."

"I still can't give out that information."

"I think one of the other patients may be messing with him. Is there a Bithiah on the fourth floor?"

The receptionist jumped. "I can assure you there is no Bithiah in this hospital."

"You didn't check."

"You need to leave, before I call security."

"How could you know without checking?"

The receptionist picked up the phone.

"All right. I'm leaving." Henry walked outside. He needed to soothe his nerves. He walked down the stairs to the parking lot, counting. Seventeen.

The next day there were eighteen stairs.

Henry paused at the top. He turned around and counted. Eighteen. He walked down and counted, then climbed back up and counted. Eighteen.

A man in a Sixers jersey walked past. A toddler waddled along next to him.

"Have you ever counted these stairs before?" asked Henry.

"What?"

"I counted them yesterday, and there were seventeen, but now I get eighteen."

The toddler tugged on the jersey. "Daddy, let's go see Bithiah."

Henry stiffened. "Who?"

"My sister, Beth. Man, if you've got any more of what you've been smoking, let me get some. Otherwise, I'm gone." He and the toddler walked away.

Henry followed. If he could just find this woman he could get her to stop harassing Brian.

The same receptionist sat at the front desk. He noticed Henry immediately. "Sir? Sir!"

The man in the Sixers jersey and the toddler disappeared behind closing elevator doors. All of the numbers above the doors lit up. Henry ran for the stairs.

"Sir!" yelled the receptionist. "You can't just go up there! Security!"

The fourth floor. Bithiah had to be on the floor with all of the other mental patients. With Brian.

He burst out of the stairwell and ran toward Brian's room. He checked all the rooms in between, but Sixers Jersey was nowhere to be found. Finally, he sat down next to Brian's bed.

"You never gave me a chance to answer," said Brian.

Henry sat down. "Answer what?"

"Your question. What my reward was for finishing the foundation."

"Oh right. Your dream building. How's that going?"

"I was right. Construction is picking up now that the foundation has been set. Bithiah is very happy. But your question."

Henry obliged him. "What was your reward for finishing?"

"I can see."

"You could see before."

"Not like this."

Henry sighed. "Tell me about it."

"You're not interested."

"Yes I am."

"What do you think they'll bring for lunch today? I've decided I love Jell-O cups."

Henry shook his head and sighed. "I don't know. Hopefully a Jell-O cup."

Brian nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, I agree. I agree."

Three security guards rushed in. "You! Get away from that patient."

"This is my cousin," Henry protested. The guards grabbed his arms behind his back and forced him into the hallway.

"Henry!" shouted Brian. "Henry!"

"I told you he's my cousin. Let me back in there." The two larger guards looked to the short one for instruction.

"Fine. See what the nutcase has to say."

They forced him back into the room. Brian grinned. "She asks about you. She can't wait to meet you."

Henry tried to back out of the room, but the guards held him tight.

"She says you'll be a beneficial asset. With all your number skills." He leaned forward like he was sharing a secret. "Although, sometimes when she's around, things like numbers get a little....screwy." He giggled.

"Let me go," Henry whispered. "I'll leave."

"We'll escort you." The guards let go of his arms, but still walked close behind him.

He stopped next to a janitor's cart. "Hey," he motioned to his watch, "look at this."

The guard closest to him leaned forward. Henry jabbed his fist into the guard's nose, turned the cart over and ran for the elevator. The guard with the bloodied nose cursed and doubled over. The other two scrambled over the cart and spilt chemicals. Henry sprinted into the elevator and closed the doors.

Henry closed his eyes. "I'm coming, Brian." He pressed all of the buttons, and then read his watch. "Ten thirty-four and forty six seconds. Ten thirty four and fifty two seconds. Ten thirty four and fifty nine seconds. Ten thirty five and..." Henry didn't know what that tiny hand meant. It pointed to a two, but he was pretty sure it meant more than two seconds.

He slammed his fist against the emergency stop button, and pressed the "open" button. The opening doors revealed the damp, black corridor. Fog drifted into the elevator.

You came back.

"You stay away from my cousin." Henry strode down the hallway.

So brave. But will you remain that way after I let you see? So few do.

Something brushed against his ankle. He kicked it away. "Where are you?"

What do you plan to do once you find me?

A light flickered on from one of the doorways, revealing an examination room. A man in a lab coat stood holding a clipboard. "Ah. Hello. You must be Henry. I'm Brian's doctor. I understand you've been looking for me."

Henry stared. "I...uh."

The man's eyes turned black. Henry roared. He grabbed the man by the collar and flung him against the wall. The doctor shattered into shadowy glass.

Done with games, are we? Fair enough. Look into the shards, Henry

Henry stepped to the glass. He picked up a fragment.

Now look. I can show you everything.

He placed the shard on the floor, by itself, and then picked up two more. The glass pulsed with heat. The scent of his burnt flesh reached his nose.

What are you doing, Henry?

Henry stacked the two shards next to the one, and then stacked three more. What came next? Four? No. Five.

There you go, Henry. Play with your toys. Let your mind go.

Seven next. Then eleven. Henry's hands burned and bled. But he continued.

What? I can't...Let go of me, Henry.

The walls shook. Something pushed in against the cinderblock.

Let me out! Let go!

Henry stacked glass. Prime numbers up to a hundred and eleven. The voice grew quieter, its screaming stifled. Henry walked back to the elevator.

Henry. Don't leave. I can make you powerful. I can make you a god.

He climbed back into the elevator, and went to the fourth floor. Brian still lay in bed, arguing with the nurse.

"I'm telling you, I'm fine. Why am I even in a psych ward? I thought you said I was in a caving accident. Henry? Oh thank God. Henry, tell this woman I'm not crazy. She says I can't check myself out."

Henry laughed. "I'll see what I can do."

Empty Mansions in Heaven

(Originally published in The Bicycle Review, 2014)

We arrived here in Heaven several years ago. Since then, no one else has come.

We were driving to Grandma's house, the family cruising through the mountains in our minivan. But an 18-wheeler ran us off the road, and we fell 50 feet into the New River.

Drowning hurt, but not as badly as watching the baby stop breathing.

And then in a few moments--there we were--being guided through the pearly gates by Saint Peter, who we later decided already looked rather worried.

A crowd greeted us, smiling and singing. A few wandered off once they realized we weren't anyone they knew.

Nobody has wings here. The kids think that's weird.

Grandpa came looking for us, and after chatting a bit about Grandma, he showed us to our home.

"Is this a new neighborhood?" asked the kids.

There are a lot of empty mansions in heaven.

The first 100 years were everything we'd been promised. Real happiness. True joy. Then we noticed the furrowed brows, the anxious pacing.

The welcoming committee turned into worried families waiting for the lost sheep to come through the pearly gates. No one has come through for 107 years, 5 months, and 7 days, when we arrived.

Yesterday we heard two men arguing about diving assistance interfering with free will. This morning a husband and wife fought on golden streets about whether men were all sinners or if they had conquered death.

We didn't know there was arguing in Heaven.

The kids are getting restless, and asking when their friends are coming.

We'd ask God, but he mainly just looks down at the earth and cries.

Transcend

I want to tell you about the most remarkable psychological phenomenon to have ever occurred, the greatest leap of research in the past dozen centuries, and my little brother, Sam. There should be enough time for me to finish (as if Time is a real concept for me any more) before I slip into a state of mind that will require a white jacket. But who knows, Jill slipped yesterday. It could come every moment now. Any moment now. Don’t worry; I’ve been making that mistake for days. I should still have plenty of time. What’s it like, though? Letting go of sanity, and becoming something less than human?

No. I have to stay on topic. I need to tell this story.

My average, blue-collar parents never expected a child like me, let alone a child like Sam. My father worked on Hondas from the day he finished high school until last night when he locked himself in the garage with one and waited for the fumes to put him to sleep. My mother was a career counselor for high school students when she wasn’t home trying to keep up with her children. She held onto sanity nearly 24 hours longer than Jill.

Like I said, neither of them expected to have a child like me. I was reading novels before I finished kindergarten. High school was over for me before I got my driver’s license – I graduated four years early. I had my first master’s by the time I was eighteen, and my doctorate at twenty. Then I joined the university that I had spent so much time with and became an ethics professor.

Sam was a different story. There are several people born every year that lead a life like mine. Sam was the first person to ever lead a life like his. For the first few years, doctors said he had autism. He cried all the time. When he was two and I was seven, our parents took us to Disney World for my birthday. Sam cried from the moment we went through the gate to the moment we got back into the car. It was too much for him. My parents decided he just needed to be left to himself.

But that wasn’t it. I think they knew that, but I’m not sure. Sam cried a lot no matter what we did. A flock of birds flew by once and he took one look and started bawling. He would look at a map and tears would start to flow. There was no telling what would set him off.

That went on until he was three, and we were playing hide-and-seek with our mother – one of the “safe” games the psychologist said it was okay for Sam to play. Mom found me first, and then we set off to find Sam. An hour passed.

“Sam,” we called, “come out now.”

But he didn’t.

“Okay,” said my mother, breathing deeply, “We’ll look five more minutes, and then call the police.”

I ran from room to room, frantically checking all the places I had checked before, calling Sam. “You win, Sam. Come out now, Sam. You win.”

This time he did. He crawled out from beneath of pile of clothes in my parents’ closet, smelling like old clothes. A grin stretched across his face. No child was ever happier. “I did it,” he said.

“That’s right, Sam,” I said, hugging him. “You win.”

His bright blue eyes gleamed as his smile grew bigger. He nodded his head, wanting me to understand. “I did it. No more crying.”

“Okay, Sam.” I wiped the tears from my eyes just as our mother rushed into the room and swept Sam into her arms, scolding him and telling him how much she loved him.

He was right. After spending an hour in that closet, there were no more tears. I can’t remember him ever crying after that. Sam change a lot after that. The doctors said his autism went into remission. That was bullshit, though. They just didn’t know what happened. All of a sudden Sam didn’t mind crowds. He didn’t mind being outside. In fact, he loved it. He would skip around our mother at the mall, taking in every detail of his surroundings and loving it all.

As he got older, every day events became more remarkable.

Shit, this is like trying to crunch a Victorian novel into a pamphlet. There’s so much I want to say, but I might be running out of time. I just saw Sam walk by my office window. I could be slipping. Or maybe he isn’t dead yet. It could be either one. Anyways, I’ll attempt to give you the highlights of what should be a three volume work.

Sam was always borrowing my things, and I was always going into his room to get them back. I got home from school one day, I think he was eight – though I can’t be sure, and found my stereo missing. I groaned and walked to Sam’s room, knocked, and entered.

I had to step over a mind-numbingly complex model train track, full of bridges, track switches, and even a jump that Sam had constructed himself. There were always several trains going at once, always set up to barely miss running into each other.

“Sam,” I said, “Give me back my stereo.”

“I’m using it,” he said, not looking up from his desk.

He was using it. It was playing an audio version of a Vonnegut novel, or maybe it was the latest Oasis album. Or the NPR news. He had all of them playing, each on different radios. I don’t remember which one was playing which.

“Sam,” I said, “stop taking my things.” I walked over to his desk, nearly tripping over a dozen open books, all arranged around a single spot, as if he had been sitting there reading all of them. His television was on, showing a rerun of Cops.

Sam sat at his desk, his left hand operating his computer, switching between several instant messaging programs and several internet browsers. His right hand scratched a stick of charcoal against a canvas. As I first looked at the canvas I saw dozens of formulas, notations and numbers, symbols I that I still wouldn’t be able to identify. But then I realized I was wrong, and he was sketching a train moving down a track. The train only had a single a window in front, without any windows or doors on the sides.

“What are you doing?” I scolded. “You can’t possibly be paying attention to all of this.”

He scowled up at me. “Yeah, you’re right. That show’s boring.” He grabbed the remote and switched off the television.

I walked out angry, but even then I knew I was wrong. He was taking in everything in that room. Somehow he could do it. I just didn’t realize the magnitude of what that meant.

As Sam progressed through school, he began to be tormented by the other students. Our father said he just didn’t fit the mold. But Sam did more than not fit the mold. Sam burst from the mold, leaving every other mold warped and torn in his wake. And the other students could not stand it.

Not that Sam discouraged them from disliking him. He simply did not give a damn, and had no problem responding to their jests with comments twice as sharp. Every year he was in school was accompanied by several fights, none of which he ever initiated. The word was he could whip even the aggressors that were twice his size - although being twice his size was hardly an accomplishment.

The only time I ever saw him fight, he lost.

Badly.

I happened to look through my bedroom window just as Sam was shoved by the leader of a local group of seven or eight teenagers that wandered our street. Sam responded to the shove by grabbing the boy’s right arm and yanking it towards himself, and thrusting his shoulder into the boy’s face. Even from thirty yards away I could see the blood and tell that he had broken his nose.

The other boys descended on Sam. In less than a second he lashed out with his right hand, jabbed with his left elbow, and thrust his right knee forward. Three members of the gang fell backwards, joining their leader in rolling around in pain. The remaining five overcame Sam, bringing him to the ground.

I sprinted outside, but by the time I got there they had already left Sam on the ground. Only the wounded boys were still in sight, limping down the street as quickly as they could.

“Sam!” I yelled as I approached his crumpled form. “Are you all right?”

My little brother looked up at me through his swollen cheek, blackening eyes, bleeding nose, and split lip, and spoke to me as if he hadn’t heard me correctly. “I just got my ass kicked.”

He tried to smile but winced with the pain. “I could have taken them.”

“Of course you could,” I said, reaching to help my brother off the ground.

He jerked back. “No,” he said sternly, “I should have been able to. I could see everything I needed to do. I just couldn’t-” He clenched his fists and bit his lip, trying not to cry.

At first I thought it was the pain making it so difficult for him to not cry, but as I looked back on it, I realized that the pain didn’t bother him. The only thing that almost brought tears was not being capable when he thought that he was.

The only thing I could ever compare it too was when he learned to walk. He would hang onto a chair smiling at our mother as she called for him. His arms stretched towards her he would take several steps and fall. Every time he fell he would burst into tears. It didn’t matter if he fell onto cement or a pillow, he sobbed. Once or twice it seemed like he was trying to get back up. Trying to get up and walk to his mother even though he couldn’t stand on his own without something to hold on to.

Frustrated. That’s the word for it. Frustrated. When he felt he should be capable, if he wasn’t he could not stand it. It didn’t matter what it was. If he thought he could, and he couldn’t, then he would get frustrated.

Shit. There I go rambling again.

I’ve began to fear doing that. The more I ramble, the more it seems like I might be loosing my grip. But sane people ramble, right? Even before what happened, sometimes I would get stuck on a single idea and just go on and on about it, and just beat the same idea to death, over and over –

Shit. I wonder how much time.

Frustrated. Right. Sam was frustrated. All the way through his education, right into his research career at the same university as me.

Just two (days, months, years?) weeks ago, Sam was in his lab in the next building over from mine. I was supposed to eat dinner with him and his wife, so I walked over to talk to him.

His lab was something out of a cheap horror flick. Tubes connected beakers of bubbling liquid. Bunsen burners heated solutions on multiple counters. Several metal cylinders vibrated, I assumed mixing solutions to be used. There were charts on three separate walls, each half full of measurements and figures. Sam hurried between all of this, adjusting dials, stirring liquids, adding to solutions, writing and erasing from the charts; his white lab coat flowing behind him, encouraging the B-movie horror image already in my head.

A beaker began to overflow and Sam muttered and ran to attend to it.

“You look like Dad,” I half-shouted. “Remember how when he’d make breakfast he’d try to cook everything at once and always end up burning half of it?”

Sam had apparently already noticed me, and responded without looking up from his duties. “He always said he needed it to wait for him.”

“Are you having trouble with all this? Do you need it to wait for you?”

After fixing the current mishap, he turned to me. “No, I don’t need it to wait. I need to catch up.” He bit his lip and clenched his fists, then shook his head and dove back into his work. “I’ll be with you in five minutes.”

As we drove to his house Sam’s mind was still in a completely different place.

“You seem distracted,” I pointed out. “Are things going all right?”

“Oh,” he waved his hand, “You know.”

“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

Sam just shrugged.

I would have pressed further, but before I could we pulled into his driveway.

Sam looked at his watch. “We’re late. Jill probably already has dinner ready.”

I nodded, slightly offended that he wouldn’t share his problems with me.

Jill and Sam met at a conference on the Undiscovered Properties and Functions of the Neurotransmitter Serotonin. Funny how I remember that, but still couldn’t begin to tell you what the Neurotransmitter Serotonin is, let alone what its Undiscovered Properties and Functions are. But Sam knew enough about it to give a lecture, and Jill cared enough about it to be sitting in the front row, that they decided to discuss their common interest over dinner. They realized that their common interests extended far beyond brain chemicals, and a year later they were married.

Not only had Jill already prepared dinner, but she had already eaten dinner, and had gone back to her work. Sam and I ate in silence. I wondered about what was bothering Sam, while he wondered about probably dozens of issues. Our after-dinner conversation, however, suggested that he had only been thinking about the same issue I had been.

“Bill,” he said, staring up at the sky, “I could use some advice.”

I believe that was the first time those words came across his lips.

“Of course,” I replied.

“I’ve discovered something.” He spoke slowly, examining each word before letting it slip out of his mouth.

I said nothing, but waited for him to continue.

“I’ve discovered something about the brain.”

“You’ve discovered many things about the brain.” Sam’s work had been published dozens of times.

“’Brain’ is probably the wrong word. Maybe ‘mind.’”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I think I’ve found the place in the mind that affects consciousness.”

“Hasn’t that already been done? I thought they could put people to sleep just by poking the right spot inside their head.”

Sam chuckled. “They have done that,” His voice dropped to a whisper, “but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about consciousness. Our knowledge of ourselves. Who we are, what we are, and – most importantly – when we are.”

“Sam, that would be a major breakthrough. If you’ve pinpointed that, well, you’ve labeled the soul.”

“No, no, no. You’re still thinking about the brain. I’m talking about the mind.”

“The mind…”

“The mind. Bill, do you remember how I used to cry? All the time, over everything?”

“Well, yeah, but what does that have to-”

“I couldn’t stand to be in crowded places. There was so much going on, and I could focus on so little. I wanted to take everything in, but there was a limit to what I could pay attention to.”

I was confused. Of course there was a limit. There was always a limit.

“And do you remember that time we played hide-and-seek, and I was in the closet forever, and then I came out and never cried again?”

But there hadn’t been a limit for Sam, I realized. He could focus on everything around him.

“I fixed my mind. I went inside my mind, found what it was that was making me hate public places, and I adjusted it.”

“How can you adjust your mind?”

I realized he wasn’t responding to my questions. He was just telling his story. I stopped trying to ask anything, and just listened.

“It took me several years to realize that not everyone can step into their mind like me. I don’t know why I can. It’s just something I’ve always been able to do. It sure made tests easy,” he laughed. “But after that day in the closet. Oh wow, that was amazing. All of a sudden I could take in everything. Everything. I didn’t just not hate going outside – I loved it. There was no limit to what I could do. That’s why none of the other boys could take me. I could focus on every part of their body, and every facial expression. I knew what they were going to do before they did. And remember that time I was playing tennis, and then ran home and typed that paper?”

I did remember. Sam had creamed the best player from our rival high school, and then written an award-winning essay. “I composed that paper in my head while I was playing. There was nothing like it.”

Sam was beaming, genuinely happy as he reminisced.

“But then I discovered limits. There were things I couldn’t do. That time that group of kids jumped me,” he looked at me for confirmation, and then continued, “I was not afraid at all. I could tell exactly what was about to happen. I knew who was going to attack first and how to deal with him. But they came too quickly. In my mind I could see what I needed to do, but I just didn’t have enough limbs to strike with.”

Another pause.

“It doesn’t matter how much I can focus on if all I’m limited to is this body.”

The sun had dipped far closer to the horizon by the time I thought that he might be done with his story.

“That’s a lot to swallow.” I said, trying not to offend.

“I know. But think about it. Everything I said fits with every memory you have of me.”

(Oh, to be sure of my memories! That would be divine.)

He was right. After the explanation, it just wasn’t possible to see it any other way. He had to be telling the truth, simply because it was the only explanation.

“Okay. But why do you need my advice?”

“I need to know if I should continue my research.”

“Well, if you feel that your research has the slightest chance of the betterment of man, then it is your duty to do that research.”

Sam laughed. “Is that what you tell your grad students? I need advice, not a lecture.”

“Then I need to know more. What are you thinking of doing?”

He looked down at his feet. “It’s complicated.”

“Sam. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

“I’ve found another place inside my mind to adjust. I think it will help me work more effectively.”

“You’re planning on, how did you say it, ‘adjusting your consciousness’ again?”

“Yes.”

“Then go for it. You’ve obviously been frustrated lately. If this will fix that, and quicken your research, then go for it.”

Sam grinned, thrilled that my advice aligned with what he wanted to do.

I should have asked more questions. I should have made him explain to me what he was going to do. Instead, the one time Sam recognized his limits, I pushed him past them.

All it took was a single day for me to realize something weird was going on. As I sat grading papers in my office, Sam knocked and came in. He looked as he always does, professional and busy, but the stubble on his face showed he hadn’t shaved for days.

“Could I borrow some paper? My printer ran out.”

“Sure,” I handed him a few dozens sheets of paper. “Are you all right?”

“Golden,” he said, his mind already elsewhere.

He shut the door behind him, and then promptly entered again.

“Bill, my printer is out of paper, could I borrow some?”

I looked up, confused. The stubble on his face was suddenly closer to a beard. His jacket was dingy – was it like that before?

“Sam, I just gave you paper. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“You did?” he paused, searching his memories. “What’s today?”

“The third.”

“Of what?”

“May.”

“You’re right. I did. Sorry about that. But I could really use some paper.”

“Yeah, sure,” I handed him another few dozen sheets of paper. “You know what, hold on.” I reached into my desk and pulled out a ream of paper. “Just take this.”

“Thanks, Bill.” He walked out, his mind once again gone in an instant.

This time there was a full ten seconds before he reentered the room.

“Do you need some paper, Sam?”

Sam furled his brow, reminding me of our father. “Yes. How did you know?”

“This is the third time you’ve asked in two minutes.”

“Really? What’s the date?”

“May third.”

“2008?”

“2006. Sam, maybe you should head home. It looks like you need some rest.”

“That can’t be it. I just got here. I slept fine all night.”

“Sam-” but before I could continue my protest I realized that he looked like he had just slept fine all night. His face was shaven, and his jacket was clean.

“I could really use some paper, Bill.”

I handed him another ream, and then watched him walk out of my office. This time, he didn’t return.

After another five minutes of reading poorly written term papers, I stretched and raised my head.

A folded piece of paper sat on the otherwise empty end table next to the door. I was certain that was not there when Sam left. I walked over and opened it. It was written in Sam’s semi-legible scrawl, and it appeared that he had gone over it twice.

Bill, check in on Jill.

Why did he need me to check in? If he was over in his office, why didn’t he just do it?

I checked his office, and his lab. He was in neither of them. I decided to do what he asked. The drive to their house went quickly, and I was sweating by the time I arrived, although it was more anxiousness to know what was going on than it was fear.

I knocked, but when no one answered I let myself in.

The house carried an empty, silent feeling. Not silent. Someone was talking. I followed the sound to Sam’s and Jill’s bedroom. I could hear her now, babbling incessantly.

“Neurotransmitter, neurotransmitter, serotonin, would you like to have dinner? I’m free this evening and the only possible assumption is that there is a major inhibitor involved in the reuptake of a great seafood place nearby.”

“Jill?” her voice was coming from under the bed. I knelt down and peered into the shadows. She was curled up, rocking from side to side.

“Bill, how nice of you to come. I was just thinking about you and the time Sam introduced us. Do you remember that? He just turned away from his lab work long enough to say Bill this is Jill, Jill this Bill, and I think I should be able to decrease the flow of electrons and I giggled because it rhymed just like this.” She giggled.

She was wrong. Sam had introduced us at a university dinner, and Jill definitely did not giggle. Jill laughed once in a while, but I had never before heard her giggle.

“Bill? Bill, what’s wrong? You don’t seem happy, Bill. Do you remember the first time, Bill? The first time was amazing. Sam laid me down on our wedding bed and whispered ‘three volts should do it, and then I just need to figure out how to slow the reaction.’ It was so romantic, Bill, don’t you remember? I remember it. I remember it several times over.”

As she continued to babble I reached for her hand and guided her out from under the bed. She came willingly, and then sat cross-legged on the floor. I called the hospital, and listened to her tell me about her life with Sam intertwined with randomness until an ambulance came and she climbed in, telling the workers everything she was thinking about.

I stood on the porch as the ambulance drove away. I remember it several times over. What had Sam done?

The phone rang inside. I rushed in and answered it.

“Sam?”

“Sam this is your father, we need to talk.”

“Dad?”

“Bill? What are you doing over there?”

“Dad, there’s something wrong with Jill. And I can’t find Sam. Is he with you?”

“No he’s not with me. But your mother won’t quit talking about him. She keeps spouting nonsense, too. I think there might be something wrong.”

I dropped the phone and raced to my parents’ house. I pulled in next to the ambulance parked in the driveway. My mother was walking out to the ambulance as I stepped out of the car.

“Oh, Bill, there you are. I was just telling these superb gentlemen about the time you fell and scraped your knee and Sam saw it just as he was getting home from work and he mixed up some medicine and all you had to do was swallow it and your knee was better right away. Wasn’t that just the most amazing thing, Bill?”

I nodded and watched and she climbed into the ambulance and rode away.

My father stood on the porch, his eyes welling with tears.

“What’s going on, Bill?”

“I don’t know.”

“She just started muttering in her sleep last night. It got worse and worse until I had to call the hospital. She told me about Sam and things that never happened. I don’t know what’s going on.”

For the first time in my life, I saw my father cry.

“Bill,” he said through his tears, “I’m starting to remember.”

“Remember what?” I whispered.

“Things that didn’t happen. Things I know never happened, things that don’t make sense. But I’m starting to remember them. Go find Sam. I need to talk to him.”

He turned around and walked inside.

I was stunned for a moment, and then decided to do what my father said. I drove back to the university. I ran from the parking lot to Sam’s building, but was stopped halfway there by, Charlie, Sam’s department head.

“Bill!”

I stopped. “I’m kind of in a hurry. What do you need, Charlie?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what, is Sam all right?”

“Sam, well I assume so, I haven’t heard anything about Sam.”

“What’s going on, Charlie?”

“Seven or eight people have just lost it. Four of them in my department, two of them grad students. They started rambling on about old memories that didn’t make any sense. We don’t know what’s happening, Bill.”

I turned and sprinted the rest of the way to Sam’s lab. The door was locked so I threw a chair through the window and opened it from the inside.

Sam stood at a counter, and had turned around at my disturbance.

“Bill.” His manner was perfectly composed, but his appearance was completely disheveled. His jacket was dingy and faded. His beard had returned, and his hair was several inches longer. Gray hairs accented his normally black hair, and I swear he could have passed for ten years older than he was.

“Sam, whatever you’ve done, you need to reverse it.”

“Reverse it? Bill, even if I knew how to do that, why would I? I’ve never been able to accomplish so much.”

“Jill’s gone insane, Sam. So has Mom, and I think Dad is headed that way. Charlie says several people around here have done the same.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“They’re all talking about you. Talking about things that never happened.”

“Bill, you don’t seem to understand. I’ve transcended. There are no barriers. I can accomplish everything. And I will. Nothing will hold be back from that.”

“What about what you’re doing to other people? You’re wife, Sam. You’ve sent your wife to the madhouse.”

“Is it jealousy, Bill? Do you simply want what I have?”

“Sam, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Because I can teach you. Not yet, but soon. I will be able to teach you to enter your mind, and adjust whatever needs to be adjusted.”

“That’s what it was, wasn’t it? What did you do? What did you adjust?”

“Haven’t you figured it out, big brother? I’ve transcended. I’ve risen above time. Instead of only controlling myself for one moment at a time, I have control of hundreds of different points in my consciousness, and I gain more every second.”

“You gain more every second? Can’t you control it?”

“Of course I can control it! I just need to work on harnessing it a little more.”

“It’s not worth it. Think of what you’re doing. It’s not worth it.”

“History will decide that. Unless you have something else to say, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

I left his lab, came strait to my office, and spent the night. Then, this morning, Charlie came in and told me. Sam was found dead three hours ago. His hair was down to his shoulders, a scraggly grayish white. His skin had become wrinkled and leathery. The coroner reported that he must have had some new bone disease, because his bones were as brittle as a man five times his age – if such a man existed. But the most amazing part was the stack of papers on is desk. “A century of research,” Charlie had called it. Somehow Sam had managed to do a century’s worth of research in a single day and night. He cured countless brain ailments and designed dozens of new surgery techniques. He even left his field and worked on countless other projects. There were breakthroughs in fields from architecture to zoology.

History will decide, Sam had said. I think he was right. But that research won’t change the people he destroyed.

I just got a call from the police. Dad locked himself in the garage with his car and waited for the fumes to put him to sleep. He must have been afraid of the memories. Afraid of the memories that start appearing where they have no right to appear.

I’ve started. I’ve started remembering things that I know didn’t happen. I think they didn’t happen. I remember knowing they didn’t happen, but now, maybe they did. Maybe the first memories were wrong.

I don’t think I have much time left at all.

Unless.

Five minutes ago (I think it was five minutes, it could have been a few weeks) Sam walked in and placed a stack of papers on my desk. I read the top page.

ThTehyey ooveveerlralapp. EvvErerytyhtnnging ooveveerlralsapps. Bubtut II ccnaan tateahcech yyuoou.

He stretched too far. He gained control of too much, and everything overlapped. “But I can teach you.” Sam had done it. He had discovered how to teach me how to adjust my mind.

I’m slipping fast, but I could step into my mind and save myself. But how long would it be before I did something as dangerous as what Sam had done? All I had to do was turn over one page and I would learn.

I’ve never been so afraid of something in my life.

I’ll always be afraid.

Cleansing

They rode into his neighborhood the third day after his twenty-first birthday.

Paul Norton was standing at his mailbox, reading his freshly opened job offer from Clark Advertising when he noticed them.

Distraction from the letter didn’t bother him, he was already trying to decide if he would tell his mother he didn’t plan on accepting the offer, or if he would simply not tell her that he had received it.

Sloth was not the reason for his unemployment. He just could not find something to hold his interest long enough. Nothing seemed right. Paul refused to do anything that did not seem right.

Clark Advertising did not seem right, although it did not seem wrong, either. He agreed with his mother that he would enjoy advertising, and he was grateful to her for setting up the interview with her friend in the business, but this was not right for him.

It just didn’t fit.

Like the horsemen.

Three men on horseback, with a fourth horse dragging something in the back, all steadily moving down suburbia, USA. The closest house he could think of that stood alone from a neighborhood was more than forty miles away – all of the land surrounding the city was only being sold to developers – so the chances of a few ranchers out for a ride seemed low.

These men were not leisurely riding around; they were traveling to a destination.

Three men, fours horses; against the backdrop of a world that had relegated riding to a hobby.

It didn’t fit at all.

As they rode closer Paul could see that there was more out of place than cowboys riding down a street of identical lower middle class homes.

These were hardly cowboys.

Paul could only clearly see the man in front, who wore naturally faded blue jeans that were several inches top short, a white t-shirt, and a letterman’s jacket. The letter was an “H,” but it was only visible because the jacket had faded a great deal before the stitched-on letter had fallen off, creating a dark patch in the shape of the letter.

The riders stayed in single file as they drew closer, and Paul was able to get a better look at the lead man’s face.

He had neglected shaving for at least a few days, creating a roughness that contrasted with the rest of his face. The time in the sun that had discolored his jacket had done little to his skin, which was clammy and pale. His eyes were a deep green, the same soft color Paul’s father’s had been.

The man with his father’s eyes stopped his horse close enough to and his mailbox that he could have taken a step forward and stroked the horse’s neck.

“Hello.” The man’s voice reminded Paul of his father, although the sound was not similar. His father’s had been raspy, the voice of a life-long smoker. This voice had probably never tasted a cigarette. “The name’s Pike.”

He touched his hand to the brim of his cap.

Paul nodded a greeting, wondering why a chance meeting on the road would warrant such an introduction.

The two riders behind Pike moved up to his side.

“This is Jacques.” He motioned to the man closest to him. This man fit closer to the cowboy image than the others. He wore boots, chaps, a vest a wide brimmed hat and a duster. The duster seemed appropriate – everything Jacques wore seemed to be covered in a fine layer of dust. Or maybe it was more obvious against all of the leather. Paul dismissed the thought and greeted the man.

“And this one,” a slight grin appeared on Pikes face, “this one we just call Doctor.”

Doctor’s name, Paul assumed, had to do with the ancient lab coast that he wore. He doubted that he would have made the connection without the hint – the lab coat was so sun-stained it was almost yellow, and the bottom six inches was nothing but tatters.

After his initial greeting, Paul wondered if Doctor’s mind was in a similar state to the bottom of his jacket.

“Howdy. Hi. Nice house. Nice front door. Can we stay?” Immediately after he spoke he seemingly forgot what it was he had asked, because he began to focus on a wasp that was buzzing around him. His head jerked around as he tried not to loose sight of it.

“What Doctor means to say we’re quite tired and we noticed you had a room for rent,” said Pike.

Paul’s hand tightened around the letter, wrinkling the paper. “There’s no room to rent here.”

“The sign in your window says something else.”

Shit, Paul thought before looking, she’s done it again.

His mother regularly renting out the spare bedroom, and it always attracted the craziest people. It seemed this time was no exception.

Paul tried to think of a way to prevent these three bizarre looking men from sleeping under the same roof as him.

“There’s only one bed.”

“That will not be a problem.” Pike continued to speak for the men. “Four walls and a door will be a blessing.”

“Yeah.” Doctor agreed. “Four walls. And a door.” He continued to jerk around his head, following the wasp with his gaze.

Jacques had begun to track the wasp as well, but his motions were more fluid. He reached his hand inside his jacket.

In a single motion, Jacques drew a silver dagger and sliced it through the air between him and Doctor, who yelped and nearly fell off of his horse. Two halves of a dead wasp fell to the pavement.

“Yes,” Jacques agreed, revealing a slight French accent, “four walls and a door will prove much more accommodating than what we’ve recently grown accustomed to.”

It was the first time Jacque had spoken, and it was also the first time he lifted his chin off of his chest. A bright red scar clung to his neck, its shape reminded Paul of a compass rose.

“Dammit, Jacque.” Doctor was still visibly shaken. “You almost cut me. You never listen. I keep telling you if you keep being so careless you’re going to kill someone.”

Jacque returned the dagger to the folds of his coat, still stone-face. “I have owned that blade twenty years and that has yet to happen.”

“That’s debatable.” Doctor muttered.

“Fool,” Jacque bellowed, “you know nothing of which you speak.”

Doctor cowered and his horse panicked. It reared back, nearly throwing its rider off.

Paul leapt backwards, narrowly avoiding getting hit by the flailing hooves.

Jacque’s horse stomped its front hoof and whinnied, shaking its head.

“Quiet.” Pike spoke firmly and calmly, and all was still.

Both horses settled, and both men sat humbled upon their mounts.

“Now we don’t want to make a poor impression upon our host-”

“Hold on-” Paul started.

Pike ignored him. “Or her son, who was just about to show us where we can tie up our horses so we can talk to her – our host.”

Paul glared at Pike, still attempting to come up with a way to avoid the inevitable. His front door opened and he knew his battle was lost.

“Paul,” his mother called out, “who are your friends?”

His eyes locked with Pike’s, he called back to his mother. “They’re just passing through. In fact, they were just leaving.”

“Nonsense,” Pike said, “we were thinking we might ask if we could rent that room.”

“Oh, of course,” the excitement in her voice was unmistakable. “Paul, help your friends with their horses and bring in the mail, won’t you?”

She walked back inside without waiting for a reply.

“So,” Pike said, “where can we tie up our horses?”

“Around the back,” Paul spat.

The men dismounted..

Would you mind helping with our forth mount?” Jacque asked.

Pike and Doctor stopped what they were doing and watched Paul.

“Sure,” Paul said, resigned. He felt the men’s eyes on him as he walked to the brown mare.

The only ropes on the horse were attached to a litter that held what Paul was sure was a leather body bag.

So that’s why they were watching him with such interest, he thought. They were waiting to see his reaction to the body they were dragging around with them.

He decided to play ignorant. Reacting to the body would only satisfy them. No, he would help them now and call the police later.

There was no bridle on the fourth horse.

Only Pike’s horse had a bridle.

“How do I guide her?”

The three stood still. Even Doctor had quit fidgeting.

Doctor swallowed. “Just walk. She should follow.”

“She might follow.” Jacque corrected. “We cannot yet be sure what she should do.”

“Paul,” said Pike, “lead her.”

With three men’s eyes secured to him, Paul stepped towards his backyard.

“No.” Doctor whispered.

Jacque crossed himself.

Both looked to Pike.

Pike was pulling the bridle from his mount in front of its head, so he could lead it. He turned and faced Paul. “Lead the way.”

“Yeah,” Paul met Doctor’s and Jacque’s stares of fear with a stare of bewilderment. “Sure.”

Paul walked to his backyard, the mare following in step. Pike walked behind him, leading mount by the bridle. Doctor and Jacque’s horses followed as easily as Paul’s.

The backyard was half an acre of dead grass, and then a wall of pine trees, their tops disrupting the flow of clouds that slipped by overhead.

“I guess we can leave them at the back porch.”

The men tied their horses to the railings of the porch.

“So they’ll follow you without ropes but they won’t stand still without them?”

“They are obedient,” said Jacque, “but they get terribly restless.” He motioned to what Paul assumed was a body. “You will have to untie that litter. We must let her rest.”

All the horses were secured and the litter dragged against the house when Mrs. Norton opened the back door.

“Can I offer you boys some lemonade?”

“Well, thank you.” Pike grinned. “I don’t think we could say no to that.”

“You are very generous,” agreed Jacque.

“Couldn’t agree more,” piped Doctor. “I’m just going to stretch my legs a bit.”

Pike and Jacque followed Mrs. Norton inside. Doctor stretched and walked to the edge of the yard, then began following it around the house. Paul hung behind, watching Doctor. Every few feet, doctor reached into his pocket and dropped something to the ground.

From that distance Paul could not make out what Doctor was using for his trail. It might have been the size of a coin, but there was no glint at all.

After waiting for Doctor to disappear around the front of the house, Paul jogged over to where he had started his trail of breadcrumbs.

They were almost breadcrumbs.

Paul picked one up and examined it. He held a small Ritz cracker, with two intersecting lines scratched into either side.

He dropped it back to the ground as he heard Doctor’s voice reach around the far side of the house.

“Romeo and Juliet

Are together in eternity”

Paul sprinted back to the porch, reaching it just as Doctor came into view. He stopped singing and walking when he noticed Paul.

Paul grinned. “More cowbell?”

Doctor stared, his hand clasped around another cracker.

“The song. It needs more cowbell.”

Doctor tilted his head. “I disagree.”

“No, it was a skit from – never mind.” Paul stepped inside. “I guess there aren’t too many crazy nomads who watch Saturday Night Live,” he said to no one.

He stayed at the door, watching Doctor through the glass.

His mouth continued to move, but the song was not loud enough to reach Paul. Doctor reached the edge of the woods and slowed down. He walked the border, still dropping the crackers. Mid-way through her stopped. He craned his neck, trying to look over the shortened horizon, but didn’t take a step into the trees. A minute passed before Doctor stopped searching the forest, and continues his walk. His eyes stayed glued to the trees for the rest of the walk.

“So where are you boys from?” asked Mrs. Norton.

She had prepared dinner and invited her new housemates, a habit she had of doing on a new renter’s first night.

A habit Paul detested – especially tonight.

“All over,” Pike said between bites of fried chicken.

The men had removed their grab bad or overcoats and hung them in the foyer. Paul noticed how they each hung a little too taught – as if there something in an inner pocket weighing them down.

Something like a weapon.

“We have been traveling for quite some time.” Jacque had the manners of royalty. His left hand rested in his lap and his napkin dabbed his face after every bite.

“Oh, I could never do that.” Mrs. Norton said. “I would have to settle down somewhere.”

“That’d be the life,” doctor said, reaching for another roll.

Paul noted that Doctor’s eating habits were the opposite of Jacque’s.

“Don’t you like what you’re doing?” She sounded genuinely concerned.

“Well, Mrs. Norton,” Jacque said, “sometimes you do what you want to, and sometimes you do what you have to.”

“Oh.” She looked down at her plate. “You know, someone came by yesterday who said he was a traveler, too.”

Pike, Jacque, and Doctor looked up from their plates.

Paul glanced around at his guests, and then joined them in encouraging his mother to continue.

“He came by rather late,” she spoke hesitantly, “I almost didn’t open the door.”

“It was a night?” Doctor whispered.

“Did you invite him in?” asked Pike.

“Yes, it was night. I thought it was odd that someone would be knocking on the door so late. I didn’t even have the room for rent sign up yet.”

“And did you, did you invite him?” asked Pike again.

“Well, no.” The three men exhaled and leaned back. Jacque crossed himself. “He seemed a little off.” Doctor nodded his head. Mrs. Norton continued, encouraged by this show of support. “First he asked to use the phone, then for some water. I swear he just wanted to get in the house. I shut the door and grabbed to phone to call the police, but when I looked outside he was gone. It couldn’t have been more than 15 seconds, I don’t know where he could have gone.”

Police, thought Paul, I’ve got to call the police about that body. But I’ve got to make sure it’s a body first.

“I doubt he will return.” Jacque patted Doctor’s back. “Right, Doctor?”

Doctor grinned. “Can’t imagine.”

Paul stood up, knocking his chair over.

“Paul, what’s wrong?” his mother asked.

What’s wrong, he thought, there are three lunatics now renting the spare room. Armed lunatics, most likely.

“Nothing’s wrong, I just have to get some things done.”

I’ll just head upstairs until they turn in and then check the bag. Then I’ll call the cops.

Paul went up to his room, and drowned out the sound of conversation with his stereo.

It was dark when Paul awoke.

He groaned and glanced at his clock.

2:30 am.

The lamp was still trying to illuminate the room, but without assistance from the sun, it was barely succeeding.

Paul got up to turn off the lamp. His mother must have already turned off his stereo. He relieved the overly-worked lamp from its duty, and began to remove his clothes.

A muffled scream forced its way through his door.

Pulling his shirt back down, he grabbed a baseball bat and rushed to his mother’s room, prepared to beat away the attacking guests.

Mrs. Norton lay asleep in her bed.

The muffled scream reached him again, this he could tell it was coming from the guest room. Paul stared down the hallway. The door was slightly ajar, and another struggling light was limping through the crack. He crept to the door, and peered through the crack.

Pike and Doctor stood over the bed, holding down Jacque. Doctor leaned over Jacque, and pressed something against his neck. Jacque screamed again, biting down on leather.

“Is it enough?” Pike whispered.

“No.” Paul expected the word to be coming from doctor, and at first that was what he heard. But it was Jacque that said “no.” I was Jacque that said, “Keep going.” It was Jacque that screamed into the leather another five times before they stopped. And it was Jacque that said “It is good for now.”

Paul heard someone breathing heavily, the sound arguing with the silence of the night. He realized the sound was coming from him and stopped.

“Are we ready?” Jacque spoke, still in pain.

“Yes,” Doctor agreed. “Let’s get it over with. Pike?”

“Let’s go.”

Paul hurried back to his room and shut the door. He listened to the men creep down the stairs, and waited the back door open and close. When he was satisfied, he followed.

He stood at the back door and watched through the glass.

Pike and Jacque had grabbed the litter, and were dragging it. Doctor ran ahead to the tree line. He peered into the trees, looking for something. Satisfied with what he saw, he reached down and picked up one of the crackers. Pike and Jacque dragged the litter past Doctor and into the trees. Doctor dropped the cracker back onto the ground, and disappeared into the forest after the others.

Paul slipped out of the door, and silently closed it behind him. If he was going to call the police, he would have to be able to say where the body was.

He crept down the back porch stairs, the sound of his footsteps drowned out by the mournful chorus of insects. The fours horses tied to his porch watched him walk past. The mare that had taken to him so quickly shuddered and stomped.

“Quiet, girl.” Paul whispered. “I’ll be right back.”

The moon slipped behind a cloud, bathing the world in the darkness of a cavern.

Paul used the darkness to the sprint to the tree line.

The moon escaped the cobweb cloud, returning to light the world.

His ears and eyes strained for some sign to show him where the men had gone. All he saw was the silhouettes of trees. All he heard was the song of the insects.

A stick snapped somewhere in the darkness in front of him.

He took a final glance back at his house, and started towards the sound. Silhouettes passed by him as he moved through the forest at the fastest pace he could move without creating excessive noise.

Footsteps sounded ahead of him, and he ducked behind a tree. Silence. Paul looked around to the other side. Nothing. Must have been a squirrel, he thought, and continued moving forward. He heard the sound again. There was no tree large enough to duck behind, so he dropped to his stomach. He listened, but was answered with silence. Paul strained to hear further movement.

A light flickered deeper in the forest.

Paul walked towards the red glow, until he came to a small clearing.

Jacque stood in the center of the light, holding a flare above his head. Pike was partially in the shadows. His knees disappeared into the grave he was digging. Paul had been right. There was a body. Doctor knelt beside it, and unrolled a cloth. The crimson of the flare glinted off of the tools held by the cloth. Paul squinted at the tools, trying to see what they were. They seemed to be a combination of a carpenter’s and a surgeon’s workshops. Saws and scalpels. Drills and syringes.

Doctor picked up a scalpel and pressed it into the bottom of the body’s throat, creating a line down to its navel. Paul felt his throat begin to tense. He had never been sensitive around blood, but this was entirely different. He took a step backwards, and felt something crumble beneath his foot. Bending over, he felt what he had turned to dust. Cracker crumbs. In the glow of the flare, several more of the crackers were visible. They had created a small version of the ring around his house.

Jacque crouched down next to Doctor and the corpse. The light of the flare dimmed above waist level. Pike was left to dig in the shadows. Doctor ran the scalpel along the body’s chest, perpendicular to the first cut. He made a third cut, creating a square of skin. Paul gasped as Doctor gripped the flap of skin with his bare hand and ripped it back. A sound akin to cloth tearing penetrated the silence. The small blade of the scalpel was exchanged for a larger one. The blade dug into the shadows of the open chest, dancing in the red spotlight of the flare.

Doctor pulled out the man’s heart. Paul’s heart skipped, he stumbled backwards, and crashed down onto the ground.

Pike stood over him. “Get up. Hurry.”

Dazed, Paul realized that he had lost track of Pike in the darkness.

“Hurry, dammit. Get up.”

Paul crawled to his feet. “I’m sorry. I was-”

“Quiet.” Pike shot his gaze into the darkness. “Shit.”

He grabbed Paul’s arm and dragged him next to the other two.

Doctor did not look up, but was comparing two different saws that Paul assumed had been used by Civil War surgeons. The heart was resting atop the replaced flap of skin.

Jacque smiled. “Ah, here you are. I was beginning to think you would never come out from behind that tree.”

“He’s here.” There was no smile in Pike’s voice.

“I’m can see that, Pike. I’m just a little busy,” said Doctor. He gently felt the pointed teeth of the more ragged saw. Realization hit him, and his shoulders slumped. He looked up. “You don’t mean Paul, do you?”

“You are positive?” asked Jacque.

Pike nodded.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Doctor. “We have the ring in place.”

Paul bit his lip. “Hey, um-”

Doctor kept talking. “We’ll finish here. Then wait until morning.”

“What of the other job?” asked Jacque.

“We can figure that out tomorrow. Right now we just need to make sure we get this taken care of,” he motioned to the body, “and stay safe.”

“Hey.” Paul spoke firmly. The others stopped and looked at him. “What’s the ring?”

“Protection,” said Doctor.

“From what?”

“Now is not the time,” responded Jacque.

“Fine. Tell me later. But the ring. What is it?”

Pike place his hand on Paul’s shoulder. “We can answer your questions later. Right now we have more important things to deal with.”

“Answer me now,” Paul shouted. “Is the ring made of crackers?”

“Wafers,” corrected Doctor. Wrinkles of concern appeared on his forehead. “Why?”

“I broke one.”

For the third time in less than a day, Jacque crossed himself. “Lord help us,” he whispered.

“You broke one of the holy wafers?” Doctor’s breaths were becoming short and irregular. “Did you disrupt the cross?”

“What?”

“The two lines on either side. The cross. Is it still intact?”

“I crushed the whole thing.”

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Doctor muttered, “the Lord is with thee. Damnit. Pike we have to get out of here.”

Pike’s gaze stayed fixed to the black forest around them. Every few seconds he jerked his focus to another spot. “No. We have to finish with him.” He motioned toward the body. “We can’t leave him out here.”

“Doctor,” Jacque asked, “are you quite certain the ring is broken? The ring remains. Only on wafer was destroyed.”

“Yes, it’s broken. The ring I laid no longer exists. I think. I don’t know.”

“Maybe we only have a hole in the ring,” Jacque suggested. “Maybe we need only to defend one point. Or we could gather the remaining wafers and make a new ring.”

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know. I would just replace the wafer, but I ran out. The rest are in my saddle bag.”

“Could we not simply adjust the wafers to make up for-”

Doctor’s face turned a deep red. “I don’t know, damnit! There’s not a fucking book on this! We wouldn’t even still be out here if it was not for you. We would already have been done with what we came to do, and Sam would still be alive.”

“Doctor,” said Pike. “Finish.”

“Right.”

“And Doctor,”

“Yeah?”

“Finish quickly.”

Doctor picked up the saw closest to him, and brought it to the body’s neck. “Sorry, old friend.” He brought his head close to the saw, judging how to make the first cut. His finger traced an invisible line across the neck.

“This is ridiculous,” spat Jacque. He shoved Doctor backwards, drew a knife from his jacket, and slashed strait along Doctor’s invisible line. The head separated from the body. “Give me the cloves.” Doctor lay on his back and shook. “The cloves, knave, give me the cloves.” Doctor reached into his bag and pulled out three garlic cloves. Jacque snatched them from him and stuffed them into the gaping mouth of the head. He lifted the body in his arms like an old western prince charming mourning a headless sleeping beauty – and dumped it into the grave. He pressed the garlic deeper into the mouth, and tossed the head into the grave.

“Have you no respect for the dead?” whispered Doctor.

“I did at one time.” Jacque’s French accent grew stronger as he grew more upset. “But then one of them tried to kill me.”

He started pushing the pile of dirt on top of the body.

“Paul,” said Pike, “help with that. Doctor, pack up.”

In less than a minute the grave was covered and Doctor’s tools were hidden back under his jacket.

“Now we move. We move steady, and we move together. Keep Paul in the middle. I believe we have the time we need.”

What was before a ten minute walk now seemed like an eternity to Paul. The forest was now full of noise. Animals crashed through leaves and branches, giving no regard to what predators may be near. Or perhaps regard to predators was the reason for the flight. Pike lead the way, the flare held above his head, a dagger in his free hand. Doctor ran next to Paul. His hands were empty, but he kept patting various pockets. Jacque stayed in the back. Paul did not bother to check if Jacque was armed. He was sure he could fend for himself.

A loud crash erupted somewhere out in the night.

“Damn,” said Pike, “I thought we had more time. Pick up the pace.”

Paul sprinted as fast as he had ever done before.

A crash sounded again, this time on the other side the party.

“He’s playing with us,” Doctor said. “God I hate him.”

The same noise burst at them from the trees ahead. The three in front slowed.

“Keep moving forward,” shouted Jacque. “Don’t fall for that.”

Wind swept past Paul, accompanied by the random scratching branch. The lungs in his chest began to tire. His legs felt as if they belonged to someone else. He felt his blood pumping through his body, pressing against his veins, and forcing his heart to speed. The image of the body’s homeless heart resting atop its chest entered Paul’s mind, and he found his second wind.

The crashes were now the only other sound in the forest. The fleeing animals must have fled in a different direction. Away from the fleeing men. Away from whatever was stalking the fleeing men.

The noises grew suddenly more frequent. In front of him. To the right. Behind him. To his left. In front. It was circling them. Growing closer each time.

To the right a crashing noise started quietly and then quickly grew louder, the thing stalking them moving so quickly that they were not separate footsteps, just a long sound, and then Pike yelled at Doctor, and Doctor reached into his jacket and the thing was nearly on them and into the light, and Doctor flung his arm out of his jacket and into an arc, leaving a cloud of powder, that overwhelmed Paul’s nostrils with garlic, then his ears were overwhelmed by a terrible screech, and all was quiet again.

“Nice work, Doctor,” shouted Pike. His voice showed no signs of the exhaustion Paul was feeling. “There’s the yard, up ahead. We’ll need your work again.”

Doctor only nodded. His panting revealed he was in a similar state to Paul.

Pike slowed the pace.

“Do not slow down, you fool.” Jacque bellowed from behind. “He was only loud before so we would think him gone now that he is silent.”

Paul ran faster than he had ever had in his life. Doctor pulled in front of him, creating a single file line. They reached the edge of the trees, the edge of Paul’s yard, the edge of safety. Doctor reached down and swept up a wafer as he ran by. Paul stumbled, running into Doctor, knocking him several feet further into the yard. Jacque stepped into the yard. “Pick up the wafer,” he shouted at Paul. “Pick it up, and put it into place.” Paul dropped to his knees and grabbed the wafer. Glancing down either side of the tree line, he placed the wafer in line with the others.

The moment it touched ground the creature was in his face, screeching again, its hot, blood-smelling breath rushing past a mouthful of fangs and moistening Paul’s skin. Then it was gone and Paul fell backwards, unconscious.

“If you knew the kid was following us, why didn’t you say something?”

Reality scratched at Paul’s eyelids.

“Paul has to learn at some point. I did not see why it would make a difference whether it was tonight or later.”

Consciousness tugged, opening his eyes for a second in a reverse blink.

“Well, your judgment hasn’t really been at its peak recently, has it?”

Paul now joined in the fight against the silent blackness, fighting with his neck to turn his head.

“That’s enough. You can’t blame him for what happened to Sam. Anymore than you can blame him for what happened to the others.”

Paul swallowed down the advancing forces that tried to pull him back to sleep.

“But he was there. Why didn’t he stop it? Why didn’t he do something? If he’s so goddamn strong why didn’t he do anything?”

“I am not strong. I am diseased. Filth runs through my blood, and into my muscles. It strengthens them but it leaves its stench all throughout my body. And my mind, God in heaven, it howls in my mind.”

Paul fought back the tide.

“Our friend has joined us once again,” Pike was smiling.

Paul sat up. The four sat around a fire in the back corner of his yard. Doctor held a railroad tie, scratching small markings onto the cold metal. The tree line was less than ten feet away. He rubbed his eyes.

“What happened?”

“You saved us,” said Doctor, “after you damned us.”

“Doctor, you really have an odd way of looking at things,” Jacque said. “You stopped directly in front of him. If he had missed running into you that would have been a miracle in itself.”

The sight of the mouth of fangs and the moist feel blood-lined breath rushed back into Paul’s mind. “What was that thing?”

“That thing,” said Pike, “would be a thief, but only a human can be a thief. It would be rapist, but only a human can be a rapist. It would be a murderer, but only a human can be a murderer. It would be the leader of a vast and terrible army,”

“But it’s not human,” Paul whispered.

“Oh no,” Pike continued, “It would be the leader of a vast and terrible army, but we’ve been preventing that. What he is, is a devourer of souls.”

“Try not to be overly dramatic,” Jacque said, “technically we do not know what happens to his victims’ souls.”

“We know they’re trapped on the earth until-,” Doctor rubbed at the dried blood on his hands, “until someone intervenes.”

“Is that what you did back in the woods?”

“It was,” said Jacque.

“But you had to cut out his heart? You couldn’t just drive a wooden stake through it?”

Pike looked over the fire into Paul’s eyes. “You ever had a dead best friend come at you even after you drive a piece of wood through his chest? Stoker didn’t get everything right. We’re figuring this out as we go.”

“So it’s a vampire?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought vampires were rich noblemen who lured you to their castle to slowly drink your blood.”

Jacque grinned. “He was at one time. But we’ve driven him underground.”

“But he wasn’t even a man.”

“You might look a little like that,” Pike said, “if you went three months without eating, drinking, sleeping-”

“Beating off,” added Doctor.

“He’s starving,” said Pike. “He’s only been able to satisfy his thirst once in the past three months.”

“So why hasn’t he died?”

“He cannot die from starvation,” Jacque said, “even if he wished it on himself. His urges grow stronger with every moment, but we have kept him on the run and unable to feed.”

“So what are you guys? Some kind of vampire hunters?”

“A rat does not hunt a snake. You cannot hunt that creature. We do not hunt. We stay one step ahead, and we cleanse the land.”

“I thought you said he was running from you.”

“I said we keep him on the run. He is chasing us. But as long as we stay one step ahead, making the land poison to him, we keep him from ever resting, and more importantly, from ever feeding.”

“How do you make the land poison to him?”

“We make it holy to us,” Doctor said. “That creature cannot enter a church, because it is a holy, blessed place. We have made nearly a tenth of the country into churches.”

“How can you do that?”

“In a certain denomination, when a church is built, holy water is sprinkled on the highest beam, like the ones protecting your house, and a blessing is said. In God’s eyes, that’s when that building becomes his house. We find the highest point in an area, and do that same.”

Pike laughed. “God makes the rules, we find the loopholes.”

Jacque shook his head. “I maintain my stance that the good Lord approves of what we are doing. I would argue He helps us continually.”

“So that’s what you were planning to do after you buried that guy?”

“Yes,” Jacque said, “but then our old acquaintance found us.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“We’ll have to go back and finish the job,” said Pike.

“How do we do that?” asked Paul.

“It’s we now, is it?” responded Pike.

“You expected me today, didn’t you? You seemed to know that I was coming, but you didn’t stop me.”

“The boy is right,” said Jacque. “He should come.”

“Of course,” said Doctor. “Another man means less of a chance of dying.”

“So how do we finish the job?” asked Paul.

Jacque answered. “Tomorrow is Sunday. Christianity considers that a holy day. Today would have worked as well, because Judaism considers it a holy day. Either way, on Holy Days – there really are quite a few – the tree that must be used in the ceremony will glow.”

“Glow?”

“Brighter than you’ve ever seen before. That is why I am so sure that God supports us. Even though we use the Holy Days of any denomination we choose, and loopholes as Doctor put it, the Lord still finds it appropriate to guide us to our goal.”

“And what if the thing comes back?”

Doctor slid the railroad tie into a modified PVC pipe, and adjusted a lever on its side. He pointed it at a tree a flip a switch. The railroad tie shot into the tree quicker than Paul could follow it.

“We’ll be ready.”

A day passed.

An hour after the world turned dark, the four horsemen rode into the forest.

Jacque rode out ahead, searching for the white glow that would lead them to their destination. Doctor rode in back, tying various ropes into various knots.

Paul rode next to Pike, who was still the only rider using a bridle. Even Paul’s mount walked without guidance.

“So what happened?” asked Paul.

Pike looked up from adjusting his reigns for the fifth time. “Come again?”

“What happened to Jacque? What happened to the other guy? Why does Doctor blame Jacque?”

“Ah. I figured you would get around to asking that,” he said and sighed. “The last town we were in, we split up. Doctor and I went into the forest to find the tree. Jacque and Sam stayed behind. We had been riding so long, looking for the next destination, and I guess Sam and Jacque just got so tired that they both fell asleep. Jacque doesn’t remember who was supposed to be on watch. He doesn’t remember much from that night.”

“Why?” Paul glanced around the forest. It was not as quiet as the night before. The usual insect songs and owl calls rang through the air. It was safe.

“Well, Doctor and I got to the tree, I climbed to the top, sprinkled the holy water, said the blessing, and we were done. It was the easiest ceremony we’ve done so far. But when we got back, both Sam and Jacque were strewn on the ground, with bite marks on their necks. Sam had been completely drained.”

Paul thought of the body from the night before, and how there had been so much cutting, and so little blood. The moon slipped behind a cloud, bathing everything in a deeper shadow.

“Jacque had been bitten, but he was still bleeding. It must have been working on him when I finished the ceremony in the woods. Jacque still had enough blood in him to live, but Sam was dead.”

The idea of the creature being somewhere in the darkness suddenly entered Paul’s mind. “So that’s why you had to bury him like that?”

“Yes, because otherwise he would have become like it.”

“But what about Jacque?”

“Jacque will be fine. If he were to let himself, he may change. But unless he dies, he will be fine.”

“Can you stop it?”

“We hold a crucifix against the wound. It sears it closed. If we don’t, it opens back up, and makes his temptation to give in stronger.”

Something burst through the trees ahead of them, and for a moment Paul was sure that the creature had found them, had somehow avoided all detection, but then Jacque spoke and Paul knew they were still safe.

“I have found it. Up over this ridge you can see the light. It should not be much more than a ten minute ride.”

The four hurried their horses’ pace. As they came up over the ridge, Paul was almost blinded with the brightness of what they sought. He had never seen a light of such magnitude. It grew near, and Paul expected to hear the hum of a generator powering whatever was creating such a bright light, but there was nothing. They were nearly twice as deep into the forest as they had been the night before. When the light was less than fifty feet away, Paul could finally make out what it was. The sign to show them which tree to use was not shining on the tree, it was the tree. They reached the glowing white tree, and dismounted.

Jacque had his head down, his hat covering shielding his face from the light. He looked up at the tree and grimaced.

“Just keep looking down, Jacque,” said Pike, “we’ll be done in a moment.”

“I want to kill that bastard,” he muttered.

Doctor stepped beside Paul. “Whatever’s in his blood can’t stand whatever’s lighting up that tree. God or something. Holiness. I don’t know.”

A sizzling noise pierced the now-silent air.

“Shit,” moaned Jacque and pulled his sleeve over the exposed, bubbling skin between his glove and his sleeve.

Pike handed Paul an eye drop bottle.

“You keep holy water in a bottle of Clear-Eyes?”

Pike laughed. “You ever try to break one of the bottles? It’s hard to do. Now get up that tree. Get to the highest branch you can, then sprinkle the water on it and perform the ceremony.”

“Presto-chango, instant holy ground,” laughed Doctor.

Paul began climbing the glowing tree. He expected it to be warm against his skin, but the light carried no heat with it. As he reached the first strong branch, he heard a sizzling noise again. Paul looked down at Jacque, who looked at the others and whispered, “It’s not me.”

A blurred figured dashed into the light and out the other side. Doctor fell on his back in shock.

Jacque was gone.

“Shit,” yelled Pike. “Jacque!” He started in the direction the blur had gone.

Jacque screamed somewhere in the forest.

Doctor crawled to his feet and strained his neck to see past the wall of the dark that comes with such a bright light. “Jacque!”

Jacque screamed again, and a figure flew back into the light, its back smashing against a thick tree limb. Jacque ran into the light behind the figure, almost as fast the first blur. The creature leapt to its feet, and looked at each of the men on the ground in turn. It was the first time Paul had seen it clearly. It was naked, and its skin so pale it was almost gray. Its fingers ended in claws, which dripped with Jacque’s blood. It stood hunched forward, its head to the side, staring down Jacque. The cowboy with the newly discovered strength leapt at the creature, pulling his knife from his coat. The beast grabbed the branch he had been flung into, and in one motion broke it from the tree and smashed it into Jacque, sending him flying out of the light. The moment the branch had become separate from the tree, it stopped giving off light.

Doctor ran to his horse and Pike ran towards the creature.

With a flick of its wrist Pike was thrown backwards, land at the edge of the light and bouncing into the dark.

Steam was rising from the thing’s back now, as it stepped toward the direction Jacque had flown. It stopped and turned its head up to Paul.

Paul stared into the thing’s white eyes, unsure of what to do. Before he could decide, the creature dashed itself against the trunk of the tree, creating a massive vibration that knocked Paul from his perch. In a moment it was standing over him, peering down almost curiously. It slashed its claw into Paul’s face, drawing blood. It brought the claw to its nostrils, sniffing and then licking it clean. It opened its mouth and Paul was once again faced with a thousand tiny daggers, being polished by a bloodstained tongue.

“Pike! No!” Jacque screamed from somewhere in the dark.

Pike had gotten back to his feet and was sprinting at the creature with a dagger. It turned from Paul and thrust its arm forward, into Pike’s chest. This wound did bleed. Pike looked down at the arm pressed through his chest, then up at the creature. As he began to slump, he spat a mouthful of liquid into the creature’s face. Its eyes and the surrounding flesh quickly melted into one wet mass. Pike fell backwards as the thing pulled its arm free to cover its face as it howled in pain. His hand opened, revealing an empty eye-drop bottle.

“Doctor! Do it now!” Jacque yelled at Doctor, who had not fled from terror but had grabbed a PVC pipe with a lever attached to it. He pointed the pipe at the flailing beast and pulled the lever. A railroad tie shot from the pipe, piercing the creature’s chest and pinning it to the tree. It screamed again and started struggling. Every time it grabbed the metal stake its hands would hiss and it would howl even more.

“Paul, get up that tree,” Jacque yelled.

As Paul ran around to the other side of the tree, he saw what was causing the creature such pain. All along the sides of the stake had been etched tiny crosses, so that there was no safe place for the thing to grab it. Paul climbed the tree, rushing to the top. Halfway up the creature brought its fist down against the trunk, sending an even greater tremor than before, but Paul held fast. When he was sure he could climb no more, he took the bottle from his pocket, splashed it on a branch, and said the blessing.

The tree glowed brighter than before, bathing everything in a blinding white light. His hands disappeared from before him, and he saw nothing but white. His only assurance that the tree still existed was that he continued to cling to it.

Below him the creature howled louder than any living thing Paul had ever heard. The agony in the cry pierced through Paul’s body, making him beg for mercy. If there could be no immediate mercy for him, then let the thing’s pain stop so the screaming would stop. The tree vibrated several more times before the screaming stopped.

Slowly, the light died down. Within a few minutes, the tree was just a tree, and Paul could see nothing but blackness. He felt his way down through the branches. Several minutes after he reached the ground, the moonlight began to be enough to show him his surroundings.

The creature lay on the ground beneath the railroad tie stuck in the tree. It had pulled itself free from the metal stake, but had done it sideways, ripping a gash from the center of its chest to the side. Its heart lay outside the creature, still as the body that still clung to it with escaped arteries.

Doctor sat next to Pike’s body, his knees wrapped up in his arms. Tears streamed down his face a he rocked back and forth. “I wasn’t fast enough,” he whispered. “I wasn’t fast enough.”

Jacque sat on the other side of Pike. He had removed his hat, revealing a severely burnt, and severely blank, face.

Paul walked up to broken trio. “What now?”

Jacque looked up at him. “The same thing as always. We press on. There is much more land to cover.”

Paul threw the empty bottle to the ground. “But it’s dead,” he shouted. “We killed it. Aren’t you done? Aren’t we done?”

Jacque continued to look at Paul. “That was not the only thing following us. That was just the fastest. We are not done. Doctor and I will never the see the end of this work – not in our lifetimes. Neither will you.”

Give Me the Wretched Refuse of Your Teeming Shore

Audrey didn’t know what hunch the President wanted verified, only that he’d asked her to visit the Vietnam Memorial Wall. But as she got out of the cab, the hastily erected privacy fence around the monument pointed her mind in the general direction.

“I trust your judgment on these things,” Jason had told her via a Skype call from Europe. “Besides, Cecily wants you to come read to her again. You’re a wonder with that girl. And hey, if while you’re here you can ease her out of this imaginary friend stage, I wouldn’t complain.”

“My judgment on what things?” Audrey had asked, ignoring the request to make a little girl grow up too fast.

She asked it again to no one as she surveyed the scene, looking for whatever suspicion Jason wanted validated.

Autumn leaves clung to the trees, hanging over the perpetually green lawn. Every Thanksgiving for forty-eight years, Audrey made a point to follow the sidewalk down to the v-shaped, obsidian wall, and find her uncle’s name. Fifth column from the left, seventeen names down.

Today, however, a chain-link fence interwoven with plastic strips interrupted the sidewalk to form a barrier wide around the monument. From inside, a reversing truck beeped, not quite loud enough to drown out the arguments of the bureaucrats inside.

Audrey reached into her back pocket to tap the library card she kept there as a cross between a good luck charm, and a reminder of her roots. Jason had run as a “true man of the people,” and thus had filled a few key cabinet positions with “everyday folks.” And so on a January Saturday morning, the President of the United States had walked into Meadowdale Library, headed straight for the children’s section, and asked the woman who read to his kids on Wednesday mornings to be the Secretary of Education.

Audrey had been a fourth grade teacher for nineteen years, and a children’s librarian for twenty-five. She didn’t have any delusions of grandeur about her ability to run a federal department, but Jason assured her that her aides would do the heavy lifting, and she’d guide them with her unique perspective.

Ultimately, she decided it’d be selfish to stay in North Carolina only helping a handful of children at a time, when she could help Jason put his vision for the country into practice.

She’d been back in North Carolina, convincing the state Secretary of Education to accept federal school lunch subsidies for the refugees from Venezuela, when Jason had called and requested this favor. She hadn’t been following the news, except the relevant updates her aides provided her with, and so hadn’t heard a thing about why the Vietnam Memorial was closed off, or what all the noise behind the privacy fence was.

Audrey found a gate manned by a suit and sunglasses. She approached and flashed her ID, narrowly avoiding accidentally flashing her old library card.

He unlocked the gate and let her through.

Diesel and coffee assaulted her nostrils. Men lowered thin metal sheets off a box truck to stack it next to the monument. Well-dressed federal agents scrambled about, forming a teeming semicircle around the obsidian wall.

Not that she could see any of the obsidian. From end to end, circles of pastel light danced against the carved names. They ranged in size from a quarter to a fist. They glowed unnaturally considering the intensity of the afternoon sun. She’d have thought they were giving off their own light, if not for the projectors set up in front of the wall.

Wires ran from the projectors to a tent which housed a bank of computers, where a gaggle of younger agents worked.

Audrey rubbed her knuckles. When it was outside her wheelhouse, Jason usually only asked her advice on heavy issues he was struggling with. She didn’t know a thing about avant garde art shows, and didn’t care to. This couldn’t possibly be as important as making sure refugee children had food in their bellies while learning English.

“Secretary Henrich.” National Security Director Oscar Velazquez didn’t seem the art show type.

“Director Velazquez.” She shook his hand. “President Stevens said you’d brief me on whatever this is.”

“Did he say anything about why I’d need a librarian’s advice?” Velazquez reminded her of an entitled parent. The sort who argued about their children’s grades, and who commented about the “witchcraft” in Harry Potter. Also the sort who plowed through bureaucratic resistance to get special treatment, and had a track record of getting their way.

She understood why Jason relied on someone who could make things happen. Didn’t mean she had to like him. “I’m supposed to give my analysis directly to President Stevens. Not to anyone else.”

Velazquez rubbed his brow. “In about two minutes, you’re going to forget all about whether the President likes you more than me.”

Audrey felt her cheeks burn. In a small town, she’d always been the smartest person in the room. She wasn’t used to being called out. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t care. I need to get back to actually investigating this, so how about I brief you, and then you can be on your way?”

“Whatever’s easiest for you.” Anything to move past her clumsy attempt at one-upping him. “Tell me about this disrespectful lightshow.”

Velazquez laughed. “Lightshow. That’s good.” He motioned for her to follow.

Closer to the wall, the circles’ movement was more chaotic than at first glance. Some trailed or mimed each other. Others pressed up against the edges and corners of the stone, huddled together, pulsing dissonantly.

None of them crossed. They only bumped up against each other, flattening edges, which must have been a delicate trick to program.

In the far corner, a handful of lights sat mostly still. They avoided the symphony of movement, and it avoided them.

It occurred to Audrey that Jason’s daughter Cecily would find the lights magical. The fence and NSA presence suggested that the federal government felt otherwise.

The workers hammered posts down through the grass at the end of the memorial, then used those posts to position a sheet of metal so that it extended the wall.

“So what’s the deal?” asked Audrey. “What are you doing with the projectors?”

“They’re cameras.” Velazquez picked up the closest camera and handed it to her.

She looked through the screen at the wall. “I don’t understand. If you’re recording the lights, then what’s projecting them?” Maybe Jason had sent her as an extra mind to figure out a puzzle. Although, his requests were usually about some moral judgment, or verifying a hunch.

Velazquez led her close to the wall. “They’re not projections.”

Up close, the lights were a blur, their patterns harder to pick out. “Spit it out, then. What are they?” Audrey touched her finger to a name in the wall: Allen Glass.

“I don’t know if you want to do that,” said Velazquez.

Three teal lights, each with a diameter of a few inches, approached her finger. They hesitated, then one nudged the smallest light forward. It bumped against her fingernail, molding itself to the curve of it. She felt a soft pressure as it pushed against her.

Her first instinct was to jerk her hand away, but forty-seven years of working with children had taught her to be gentle when panicked. She slowly withdrew her hand. The light reformed into a circle.

Audrey exhaled. What had Jason got her into? “Why did I feel that? I’m no physicist, but light doesn’t have mass.”

Velazquez led her to another section of the wall. “They claim to be refugees.” Here, a collection of lights moved in sequences, sketching out irregularly repeated patterns. A camera was positioned directly in front of the nightmare kaleidoscope.

“This is some kind of communication device?” That almost explained why Jason wanted her opinion. She knew three languages. She could read them, anyways.

Velazquez shook his head. “There’s no radio or satellite signals coming in. We’ve dug up the ground to be sure there’s no wired signals. And it’s not a recording, because they respond to our questions.”

Audrey considered briefly whether this was all a prank. But Jason didn’t fool around on the taxpayer’s dime. And Velazquez didn’t fool around. “Are you saying these things are alive?”

Velazquez nodded. “And they’re asking for help. Looks like word of President Stevens’ compassion towards the downtrodden has traveled further than we anticipated.”

When Jason had adopted Cecily after her parents had died fleeing the Venezuelan civil war, it changed the country’s attitude toward refugees. At least, it strengthened his supporter’s resolve towards helping. This had triggered an inpouring of political dissidents, religious minorities, and other various victims of persecution and peril. Jason welcomed them all. A few bad apples had made the US a slightly more dangerous place, but Audrey was still proud of him. Better for a soft-spoken child to get her pigtails pulled, than to banish a confused, stressed little boy and cement him as an outcast bully forever.

Jason had scolded her for the pigtail metaphor. “Don’t ever say that in public,” he’d warned. “These are people’s lives. Not pigtails.”

He must have had a hunch about these flat refugees.

Audrey studied Velazquez’s face. He looked stressed, tired, worried, overwhelmed. Everything except surprised.

“Where did they come from?” Audrey asked. “How much did you already know about them?”

“President Stevens only granted you clearance for this specific situation.” Velazquez was enjoying this I-know-more-than-you game as much as Audrey had tried to. “Any other information remains classified.”

“Then how are you going to accurately brief me?”

A man nearly her age came jogging down from the bank of computer monitors. “Director Velazquez, the Tudors asked to speak to Secretary Henrich.” The wrinkles on his face said he could have retired years ago, while the boyish excitement in his eyes said this was the reason he hadn’t. “Could be a breakthrough. Maybe they’ll actually talk to her.”

“Agent Hooper.” Velazquez removed his sunglasses. His dull brown eyes locked the older agent in place. “How did the Tudors come to know about Secretary Henrich?”

“She touched the wall, sir,” stammered Hooper. His passivity explained his low ranking. “They asked who she was. The only part of her on their plane was her fingernails, which are shinier than anyone else’s who’s touched the wall, sir.”

Audrey hid her nails in a fist. She’d started painting them once she discovered how often members of the Cabinet were photographed.

“And you told them who she was? Name, title, everything?”

“Yes sir, and explained she was in charge of teaching everyone’s children. That seemed to be a big deal to them.”

“Jesus Christ, son, the Tudor’s intentions are still undetermined. Don’t just tell them everything they ask.”

Audrey didn’t comment on the oddity of Velazquez calling a man fifteen years his senior, “son.”

“I’ll talk to them,” she said. Maybe that would show her whatever Jason wanted her to see.

“You don’t have clearance,” growled Velazquez.

“I do for this situation.” She took Hooper by the arm and led him back to the monitors. “How do I speak to them?”

“I don’t think actually I should…”

“Take it easy,” she cooed. “Velazquez knows I’m right. Give him five seconds and he’ll find something that needs doing.”

Right on cue, Velazquez yelled at the workers installing the wall extension.

“See?”

“You’re the not one he’ll chew out later.” Hooper didn’t seem too distraught. He gently pushed Audrey in front of a keyboard and two monitors. “The screen on the right shows the Tudors doing their little interpretive dance numbers. The screen on the left translates that into English. Roughly.”

Audrey placed her hands to the keyboard. “Tudors?”

“Oh, sorry. We started out calling them two-dee-ers. What with them being two-d. That morphed into ‘Tudors.’”

She felt like a three-year-old, constantly asking questions. “They’re two-d?”

“Not technically. Nothing is, really. But they only perceive two dimensions. To them, you’re just a sliver of fingernail.”

Questions raced off Audrey’s tongue. “How long have they been here? How did they get here? What do they want?”

Agent Hooper started talking with his hands before his mouth. “I’m a cryptographer, so most of this is hearsay, but from what they say and I hear, we’re not sure if there’s a whole Tudor society that we never notice living on some 2d plane through the Earth, or if it’s a string theory, parallel dimensions thing, and they cross over into ours. I think that makes more sense. There’s something we don’t understand about how they show up, which the NSA wants to learn. I mean, if they only perceive two dimensions, how would they hop onto the wall from somewhere else in the Earth?”

“You didn’t answer how they get here,” said Audrey.

The Tudors were circling again.

“The answer is a big, fat ‘we don’t know.’ If we did, we’d be using the technology.”

“What’s happened when they’ve come before?”

“They never wanted to stay. They come, they ask us about Heaven, they leave of their own accord. It’s usually only two or three of them.”

“Why don’t people know about this?”

“Hell, the last time they showed up was before Velazquez’s time. It’s like Area 51 but with a successful cover-up. I don’t think President Stevens had even been briefed on the last incident until today.”

The Tudors moved around the wall, avoiding the slower lights in the corner. Audrey wondered what made them different. “Why are there so many this time? What do they want?”

Hooper scratched at his gray stubble. “Hard to say. They requested ‘Heaven’s refuge,’ but clammed up when we asked what that meant. You can ask them yourself.”

Pieces started to click together in Audrey’s head. As unsettled as the Tudors made her feel, there was something familiar about them.

She typed out, “Hello.”

A white light made loops across the wall. This one was projected. It took Audrey a few second to recognize that every movement the light made was through one of eight points. It was like communicating through a Spirograph.

A light green Tudor mimicked the pattern, then kept going. The computer tracked the motion and displayed the response: “Hello, Secretary Henrich. We only have a short time.”

Audrey raised an eyebrow in question to Hooper.

“We’re moving them out of the public eye.” He pointed to the where they were constructing sheet metal extensions to the wall.

Audrey tried to decide what to ask. She held back her own curiosity about what in the world these things were, why she’d never heard of them, how long the government had known. Jason had sent her here to verify a hunch. She needed to figure out what felt familiar about these things.

“Why do you want to speak to me?” she typed.

After another swirling motion from the light, and the monitor displayed the answer. “To confess and appeal.”

Audrey turned to Agent Hooper. “Any idea what that means?”

He squinted at the screen. “The ones who came fifty years ago had some faith system we never asked much about. They came and left in just a few days. We didn’t get past asking about what they were and how they got here.”

Audrey typed her next question. “Who are you?”

Three lights touched edges, pushing back and forth, and then one moved in front of the camera. “Opponents to the power faction.”

“Why do you oppose them?”

This answer came more quickly. “Some for economics. Some for Heaven. All for cruelty.”

“Now they’re speaking our language,” said Audrey. “Money, God, and getting the hell away from people who want to hurt you.”

Hooper leaned over her shoulder. “I’m just excited they’re opening up to you. Teachers must play some therapist role for them. Ask them their plans.”

“What will you do here?”

The Tudors deliberated for over a minute. When one slipped back in front of the camera, its response was brief. “Heaven.”

“Ask them again,” said Hooper.

The light circled a few more times. “Refuge in this heaven or find another.”

Hooper shook his head. “They’ll be disappointed if they think this is Heaven.”

Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard. “Why do you need our help?” Maybe Jason wanted her opinion on granting refugee status to two-dimensional beings. That didn’t feel right, though. He would have said he needed her opinion on something, not that he wanted her to verify a hunch.

This time the circle of light moved more carefully, as if searching for the right words. “Others turned us away. And others still may come.”

“Who’s he talking about?” she asked Hooper.

He shrugged. “That’s above my paygrade.”

“What are we doing with them? Are we helping them?”

Over by the metal extension being added to the wall, Velazquez screamed at a worker. A vein bulged in his throat.

“Looks like we are,” said Hooper. “Director Velazquez never gets that worked up if there’s a simple solution to a problem. Sending them back would be a simple solution.”

“If you knew how to do it.” Audrey tapped her fingers on the keys without pressing down. “You said President Stevens just found out about them today?” So his hunch probably wasn’t something specific about this group of Tudors, but rather about something more general. She could feel the answer throwing its weight against the floodgates in her mind.

“Yep,” said Hooper. “I was on the call to explain their language to him. We couldn’t get him to use the name ‘Tudor.’ Kept calling them ‘Flat People.’”

The answer burst through in a torrent: Cecily’s imaginary friend, Mr. Flat.

Audrey’s breath caught. She dropped her hands on the keyboard, sending gibberish through the translator.

That idiot. She’d told him to trust his gut in matters of family. She couldn’t fathom his reasoning for waiting for her to confirm his hunch about Mr. Flat. If Cecily might be in danger, there wasn’t time to hem and haw about the right thing to do.

“We need to get Cecily out of the White House,” said Audrey.

“What are you talking about?” asked Hooper.

Audrey was already headed towards the gate, dialing her driver.

Velazquez shouted for her, and she turned around. The Tudors moved onto the steel extension, one by one. Grunts and agents alike were breaking down the recording and communication setup.

“Found what you were looking for?” Velazquez taunted. “Did you get spooked?”

Audrey ran straight for the Director, as best she could, to berate him in more privacy. All that came out was, “there’s a Tudor in Cecily’s room.”

She hurried for her car.

Behind her, Velazquez growled into his phone for the Secret Service to pick up.

#

Special Agent Walter Udell met Audrey at the guest entrance to the White House.

His usual jovial smile was a bit forced today. “Is Director Velazquez not with you?”

Audrey hesitated before barging past him. “He’s not. I assume he called to inform you?” She’d already had enough trouble driving past the Uniformed Officer at the gate. Walter humored the President by allowing Audrey more free reign of the White House than the average staffer, but he wouldn’t tolerate recklessness.

Walter motioned her to follow him inside. “I wouldn’t call that phone call ‘informing me.’ All I know is the incident in progress at the Vietnam Memorial is somehow related to an alleged security breach involving Cecily. Director Velazquez is on his way over to brief me. What do you know about it?”

Normally impressive no matter how many times she’d seen it, the foyer to White House now felt threatening. Every shadow on the wall threatened to be a Tudor.

“The incident at the Memorial involved refugees from a… foreign entity.” She didn’t know what sort of clearance Walter had, and didn’t want to explain something she didn’t understand herself. “The refugees resemble someone Cecily talks about. Her imaginary friend may be an intruder.”

“Mr. Flat? Are you alleging that a real ‘Mr. Flat’ has been breaking into the White House to read to Cecily?” Walter relaxed more than he should have.

“Please can we keep moving?” She touched the library card in her back pocket.

“Audrey, don’t worry. Special Agent Morrison went straight to Cecily’s side the moment I called out the security threat.”

“She has her insulin?” asked Audrey. Two years a diabetic, Cecily was still only six and wasn’t the best at monitoring her blood sugar.

“Of course,” said Walter. “And I promise you, there’s no way in hell we wouldn’t have noticed a fully grown male sneaking in and out of Cecily’s room. I’ve personally heard her talking to Mr. Flat and verified with my own eyes that she was alone in her bedroom.”

Audrey imagined one of those gliding lights slipping out from under the bed once Walter had left, touching its unnatural mass to Cecily’s thigh while she sat cross legged on the carpet, reading a picture book. “You’ve never heard of the Tudors, have you?”

“Old English kings, right?”

“Never mind.” Audrey itched to sprint upstairs, but Walter would have tackled her. And if he somehow missed, her knees would probably give out on their own. “I’d like to see Cecily for myself.”

“That’s fine, although I need to frisk you. I defer to President Steven’s judgment on everything except his family’s safety.”

Audrey chewed on her cheek while submitting to his search. “Satisfied?”

Walter waved for her to follow. They jogged up the stairs. Cecily’s bedroom—like all the First Family’s bedrooms—was on the second floor. The center hall was like a living room in itself. Bookshelves lined one wall, with ornate tables and chairs set throughout. An untouched piano sat in one corner. The President’s bedroom was through double wooden doors at the end of the hall. Cecily’s was down a narrow side hallway.

Walter opened her door.

Special Agent Morrison, shorter than the average Secret Service agent but with a frame like a Rottweiler, stood at the foot of a four-post bed.

Cecily sat atop the comforter, surrounded by Disney Princess coloring books. They both looked up as Walter and Audrey entered the room.

“All clear,” said Morrison. “I’ve searched the bedroom and bathroom. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Thank you. If you don’t mind, Secretary Henrich has a few questions for Cecily.” Walter leaned against an antique wardrobe. His body relaxed, but his eyes methodically examined the room.

Audrey joined Cecily on the bed.

“Morris told Lidia to go home.” Cecily colored in a picture of the Little Mermaid. She was used to the sort of excitement that meant Special Agent Morrison took over for her nanny. Occasional security lockdowns were a step up from her old life of fleeing a civil war.

“They want to keep an eye on you.” Audrey picked out a green crayon to color in Ariel’s scales. She considered how to approach the subject at hand, and then remembered she wasn’t talking to a state education official who’d risen to the top of bureaucracy based on a secretly-fragile ego. “Last time I came over and we played dolls, you mentioned Mr. Flat.”

Cecily shushed her. She pointed to a closed adult coloring book, one of those with intricate patterns instead of simple drawings. The girl’s insistence grabbed the Secret Service agents’ attention.

When Cecily returned to coloring without an explanation, Audrey picked up the adult coloring book. The cover read “Enchanted Oceans,” and featured waves and dolphins, each drawn with swirling patterns that created a series of mazes.

Cecily yanked it out of Audrey’s grasp.

“What do you think you’re doing, young lady?” Fifteen years as a children’s librarian had taught her how to put the fear of God into a six-year-old.

Cecily froze. Slowly, she hugged the book to her chest. “I don’t like anyone to color in this one.”

Audrey touched the coloring book to push Cecily’s arms down into her lap. “Why don’t you want to talk about Mr. Flat?”

Cecily looked from her lap to the closet, where she’d set up a nest of blankets, pillows, and stuffed dogs.

“Do you want to go to your reading spot?” asked Audrey.

Cecily nodded.

“Can I come with you?”

She shook her head.

“What if you go by yourself, but you leave the door open?”

After a moment of consideration, Cecily nodded. She started for the closet but Walter placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. He asked Agent Morrison, “Did you clear the closet?”

Agent Morrison nodded.

“Go ahead, sweetie,” said Walter.

Cecily slid off the bed.

“But you have to leave the coloring book,” said Audrey.

Cecily hid it behind her back.

“Ma’am,” said Agent Morrison as he positioned himself with a clear view into the closet. “Sometimes you have to be insistent with her.”

“No!” Cecily wailed.

Audrey had heard the girl angry, when Jason said no about a dog. And she’d heard her in pain, when she fell off the East Wing veranda railing and broke her collarbone. This was the first time Audrey had heard her distraught.

Cecily dashed for her reading nest. Agent Morrison scooped her up. She kicked at his groin and bit at his wrists. He pried her fingers from the coloring book, then let her wriggle free. She ran into the closet and dove into her blankets. “I hate you, Morris!”

Agent Morrison handed Audrey the book. “I prefer to be the bad guy in situations like these. Kids trust you to protect them more when you rule with an iron fist.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor Spock.” Walter stepped into the doorway of the closet. “What’s in the book?”

Cecily cried louder. It grew muffled as she dug deeper into her nest.

“Let’s find out,” said Audrey. She held Enchanting Oceans up for the two agents to see, then opened the first page.

She felt like she was back at Meadowdale Library, sitting beneath the poster of Levar Burton, a slew of preschoolers sitting cross-legged in front of her on a carpet that was a cartoon map of a Richard Scarry town.

Except now Audrey had to remind herself to breathe, waiting for the glowing mass of a Tudor. Maybe Jason’s hunch was wrong, and “Mr. Flat” was a coincidence.

She looked down at the coloring book. A whirl of lines coalesced into a scene of a sperm whale chasing a school of tropical fish. Cecily had colored the whale, then apparently got bored.

“What’s the deal?” asked Morris.

Audrey flipped the page, revealing a mermaid with an easel overlooking a landscape of sunken tall ships. The whole thing was colored in. Audrey grabbed the remaining pages in a bunch and let them go by like a flipbook.

“There.” Walter pointed. “What was that?”

There’d been a flash of bright color. Audrey’s stomach knotted. She flipped back the pages, keeping her fingers as close to the edge as possible.

A circle of light, this one a dull forest green, hovered over a scene of a tidal pool. It wavered like a bulb with a faulty connection. Audrey froze.

Morris tilted his head and squinted. “The hell?”

The circle slid up toward Audrey’s fingers. She gasped and dropped the book.

The light slipped out from under the book, along the rug, toward the closet.

“Get out of the closet,” ordered Agent Morrison. “Come here to me.”

Cecily moaned in fear and dug deeper into her blankets.

The Tudor lunged forward.

Agent Morrison leapt into the closet to slam the door behind him.

Walter drew his firearm. He barked into his radio. “Security breach, west bedroom. Sunbeam under threat.”

Moving in swooping jerks, the dull Tudor advanced on the closet door.

A blanket poked out from under the door as Agent Morrison tried to seal it.

“Audrey, what is this?” demanded Walter. He aimed his pistol.

Audrey gathered her courage. She stomped on the Tudor. It felt no different from the carpet around it, until it moved. It yanked her foot to send her falling backwards. Her wrist exploded in pain as she caught herself.

Walter fired twice. The shots were like two handclaps amplified through a distorted megaphone. The impact through the floorboards jostled her damaged wrist. Her ears rang. She didn’t see what he hit.

She crawled to her knees to hear another shot from inside the closet, and then Walter was throwing open the door.

The two agents yelled at each other, a muddy noise that grew more clear as Audrey’s ears recovered. “Where is she?”

“I had her right behind me, against the wall!”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know!” Confusion and despair filled Agent Morrison’s voice.

Audrey staggered to the closet doorway.

More Secret Service burst into the bedroom.

“Secure the exits!” shouted Walter. “Sweep floors one through three, out from the north wall of the center hall. Sunbeam is missing.”

The agents ran back out, giving orders through their own radios.

Walter tore apart the reading nest. He tossed a fleece blanket into one corner, and a stuffed poodle over Audrey’s head. Plaster cracked under Agent Morrison’s boot. He kicked a hole near the floor, then reached down and ripped apart the wall in powdery chunks. It revealed only studs and wiring.

Cecily was gone.

#

An hour later, Audrey sat at a table in the Garden Room in the East Wing, across from a medical officer. She checked her watch. How long since Cecily had checked her blood sugar? What if the excitement had made it spike? They had a few hours to find her, at most.

The medical officer, a forty-something military surgeon who grunted more than spoke, finished splinting Audrey’s wrist. She handed her a plastic cup holding a Percocet. Audrey shoved it away. “I don’t need it. Advil is enough.” A lie, but she didn’t want to numb her frustration and guilt.

If she’d figured out Jason’s request a little quicker. If she’d been more firm with Cecily about handing over the book. If she’d called Morrison out right away for his foolish view on discipline.

This was her fault, and her responsibility to set right.

She needed to talk to the Tudors again.

The pattering roar of a helicopter waxed and waned as they searched the grounds. A spotlight illuminated the garden and the marble columns of the East Collonade. The helicopter moved on, and the windows of the Garden Room reverted to mirrors, replacing the view of the night outside with a reflection of Audrey’s sterile surroundings.

The medical officer packed up her supplies and left, a lighter grunt to say goodbye and wish Audrey luck.

Audrey found Velazquez’s number on her cell and called. She walked back toward the main residence. The Secret Service agents had insisted she leave so they could search unimpeded. She’d tried to explain about the Tudors before realizing she didn’t know what to explain. Then Velazquez had arrived, and Audrey let them not-so-gently usher her to the East Wing.

Velazquez’s phone went to voicemail, so she ended the call and redialed.

She ended the call again when she saw him at the end of the hallway.

“Do you have proof that President Stevens sent you to the memorial site?” he demanded.

Audrey slowed. She hadn’t expected to be a suspect. “Didn’t he contact you?”

“I received an email. They’re verifying its authenticity now.”

Audrey navigated through her phone to bring up Jason’s email. “Look, it’s part of a longer chain of emails. I’m not making this up. What sense would that make, anyways? I didn’t have a clue about the Tudors two hours ago.”

Velazquez examined the phone, then relented. “Sorry about that, but I had to be sure, what with you being there when she disappeared.”

“Disappeared? That’s the word you’re going with?” Audrey tried to walk past Velazquez into the Main Residence.

He blocked her. “They’re still searching the building.”

“I saw that light thing—that Tudor—rush her, and then she was gone.”

“That sounds like disappeared to me.”

Audrey waved her finger in his face. “Now’s not the time.”

Velazquez shook his head. “I’m not arguing semantics. I’m saying that kidnapped doesn’t really begin to describe what happened, does it? Agent Morrison can’t explain it. One second she was under the blankets, the next she was gone.”

Audrey imagined the reading nest going flat as Cecily vanished out from under it. “What have the Tudors said?”

Velaquez cleared his throat. “I know you’re close to Cecily, and I’m not trying to demean your position, but I’m only talking to you to clear you as a suspect. You won’t be assisting in the investigation.”

She touched her library card, took a breath. “How long will it be until President Stevens and his wife make it back? Six hours? Nine? Who’s Cecily going to run to once you find her?”

“Agent Morrison has a close relationship with the girl.”

“Bullshit. He thought because he’s scary she’ll listen to him.” Audrey stood a little taller. “And how often did you have to rescue them from an abuser who’d groomed them for months? Cecily’s been talking about Mr. Flat since June. Whatever that thing is, she trusts it more than Morrison.”

Velazquez hesitated.

“You think special forces can swoop in, grab her, and get out?”

“We won’t be playing fast and loose with the President’s daughter.”

“Shut up and listen. You don’t even know where she is. You don’t know a thing about these Tudors, or what they want. They aren’t even talking to you, are they?”

“Oh, and they’d talk to you?”

“They did before.”

Velazquez rubbed his eyes harder than a baker kneading dough. “You’re right. There’s a chance they’ll open up more to you. And maybe we’ll need someone who Cecily trusts more than Morrison.”

Relief at being able to help quickly morphed into determination. Maybe there was hope for Cecily, if she acted a little quicker than in the bedroom. “Perfect,” she said. “Show me where you put the Tudors. And bring Cecily’s insulin.”

#

Velazquez took her to a warehouse in eastern D.C. Audrey followed him past a heavy steel door. Its squeal reverberated through the roofed expanse.

At the far end of the building, a single agent worked at the computers linked to cameras that pointed at a wide pillar of sheet metal, against which swirled the pale glows of the Tudors.

The whole setup felt lonely in such an open building.

Audrey strode straight for the translator. The Tudors would know where Cecily was.

Up close, she noticed that again there were a handful of Tudors on the corner of the wall, avoiding and being avoided by the others.

Agent Hooper stood to greet her, adjusting his collar and extending a shaky hand. “Great to see you here. They sort of clammed up once you left.”

She ignored the offered handshake to take his seat at the keyboard. The monitor displayed a collection of lights, none of whom were positioned to communicate. “What have they said about Cecily?”

“Cecily Stevens? Nothing. Why would they?”

Velazquez caught up with them. “The incident is classified until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“A missing little girl,” said Audrey. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”

Hooper sucked in a breath. “That’s awful.”

Velazquez growled. “We haven’t cleared the cryptographers. They’re still suspects.”

Hooper’s voice rose an octave. “I’ve been at either site for the past twelve hours.”

Audrey ignored their arguments. She typed into the translator. “You took a child.”

The projector translated the message, the white light following the programmed pattern. When it finished, the Tudors burst into a flurry. One light positioned itself to respond, while another left the group to approach the outcasts in the corner.

“You really think a direct accusation is the best route?” asked Velazquez. “These aren’t children you can bully around.”

Hooper fidgeted behind her. “You don’t honestly believe a Tudor kidnapped Cecily? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I saw it happen.” Audrey kept an anxious watch on the Tudor who was preparing to respond.

The should-be-retired cryptographer grabbed her shoulder. “You saw one move between realities? I knew it had to be multiple dimensions. What did it look like?”

Audrey gave an absent-minded recounting of the closet abduction while she watched the Tudor who’d gone off to the outcasts return. It convened with the others, and then the one in front of the camera started its dancing response.

“What did the Secret Service guy say?” asked Hooper. “Did he see anything in there in the closet?”

“He doesn’t know what he saw,” said Velazquez.

The monitor displayed the Tudor’s response. “None of us.”

Audrey banged out her reply. “I saw you.”

The lights drew close to each other again, then said, “Others like us.”

Velazquez gestured to the keyboard. “Describe the Tudor you saw. Everything you know. Maybe they’ll let something valuable slip.”

“You believe them?” asked Agent Hooper, incredulous. “Just like that? You really think it’s coincidence that one of them takes Cecily on the same day they show up?”

“I thought you loved them,” said Velazquez. “You seemed thrilled when they showed up.”

“They’re a fascinating form of a life that piques my curiosity, but so is the Zika virus.”

“The Zika virus doesn’t have the potential to teach us interdimensional travel.”

“I believe them,” said Audrey. She knew she had a soft spot for the downtrodden, but somebody had to. “And I like your idea, Velazquez.” Audrey typed line after line, everything she could think of about Mr. Flat. She wracked her brain for any little detail Cecily had ever mentioned about the imaginary friend.

The Tudors got close to the projection, studying Audrey’s interpreted words. The largest Tudor present, a soft peach color, pushed their own interpreter out of the way to take its place in front of the camera. It swooped around frantically.

“Did he change?”

“What’s that mean?” asked Velazquez.

“Sounds like an oddity in translation,” said Hooper. “Ask him to clarify.”

“Explain change,” Audrey typed. Mr. Flat hadn’t seemed much different from the others she’d seen, not that she was familiar enough with them to notice small differences.

The large Tudor responded. The monitor took longer to think about the translation. “Waver. Throb. Pulse.”

Velazquez bent over her shoulder to read the response. His aftershave clawed at her. “You’re the one who saw it. Did it?”

She’d hit the ground almost as soon as Mr. Flat fell out of the book, only getting a good look at him for a brief moment, but the kidnapper’s light had definitely fluctuated. Audrey nodded and typed, “Yes.”

“Do they know him?” demanded Velazquez.

The Tudors scurried around each other. The large peach circle positioned himself to respond. “Leader of our oppressors. Disappeared. Wished dead.”

“Are either of you following this?” asked Velazquez.

“Sounds like your Mr. Flat was one of the group these Tudors are running from,” said Hooper, “and they thought he’d died.”

“That doesn’t explain why he’d want a six-year-old girl,” said Audrey.

“Ask them what Mr. Flat wants,” said Velazquez.

She typed and sent the question.

Their response required no deliberation. “Heaven.”

“They were calling this Heaven a second ago,” said Hooper.

Audrey clarified her question. “Why would he want a child? Where would he take her?”

While the head Tudors argued, an outcast from the corner inched closer to the center of the wall. It bumped against the circles on the edge of the central gathering, but they frantically shoved it away.

Their answer came. “We don’t know. He has already reached Heaven.” After a moment, it continued. “You must not tell him about us. He would see us destroyed.”

Velazquez pointed at the outcast Tudors. “That little guy looked like he had something to say.”

Audrey typed another question. “What do the Tudors in the corner know?”

“Robbery. Murder. Blocking territory.”

Audrey checked her watch. Three hours since Cecily had checked her blood sugar. “There’s bigots everywhere.” Her knees creaked as she stood from her chair. The Tudors on the metal wall before her were mostly gathered around the camera and projector. Audrey picked up both by their tripods to set them up at the corner of the wall, by the outcasts. “Is that lined up?”

“Looks like it,” said Hooper. “Although, from what little we know of Tudor society, you may have just offended them.”

She’d offended a lot of bureaucrats since her confirmation, too, and that was before she was trying to save a little girl’s life. “Send them a fruit basket for me.” She returned to the computer, nudged aside Velazquez, and typed. “What did you want to say?”

The same outcast edged toward the spot where the camera recorded. The head Tudors moved to stop it. Audrey jumped from her chair, ignoring her aching wrist, and ran to the wall. She tapped two fingers in front of the advancing Tudors. Her nails clicked against the metal.

The large peach circle edged forward. She tapped the wall harder. The Tudors pulled away from the earthquake she was causing. “Tell them to let anyone speak or we’ll rescind protection.”

“How would we even do that?” spat Velazquez. “I’m not letting them out of my sight until we know how they travel.”

“It’s a bluff. They’re afraid of us. It’ll work.”

The projected light swirled around as Hooper typed. The Tudors backed off, and the outcast came forward again.

“What’s he saying?” asked Audrey.

Hooper read from the screen. “I was an oppressor. We sought Heaven. This is not Heaven, although we thought it was. He will continue seeking.”

“Are you two hearing this the same way I am?” asked Velazquez. “Mr. Flat’s pissed off he’s not in paradise?”

“I don’t know if that’s the right question,” said Hooper. “We don’t know how they get here in the first place. Whatever traveling trick they have, what if Mr. Flat used it to travel on to somewhere else?”

Audrey’s heart sank considering Cecily lost in some other world. “Ask him where ‘somewhere else’ would be.”

Hooper typed, then read aloud the outcast’s response. “You’re beyond us. If you aren’t Heaven, then he will look beyond you.”

“If we’re beyond two-dimensional beings,” Audrey thought out loud, “then what’s beyond us?”

“Nothing we can perceive or understand,” said Hooper.

“Ask him if he can take us there,” said Audrey.

Hooper asked and the outcast responded. “No. Maybe I could find where he started the journey.”

“That’s the best we’ve got so fat,” said Velazquez. “Take him up on it.”

As Hooper typed, Velazquez searched the warehouse for a smaller piece of metal. “Audrey, gather up the camera and projector. Don’t want to leave him mute.”

Before she could, the large peach Tudor forced its way back in front of the camera. Hooper read what it said. “Don’t tell him where we are. Please.”

“Tell it what it wants to hear,” said Audrey.

“You don’t mean to follow through?” asked Hooper.

“Of course we do.” Velazquez picked up a square of sheet metal and dusted it off. “President Stevens commitment to helping the less fortunate extends to the Tudors.”

Audrey thought that a weird thing to think of when Cecily was in danger.

Hooper type the reassuring response.

Velazquez held the metal to the edge of the wall, and the outcast Tudor slipped aboard. Audrey grabbed the camera and projector, while Hooper grabbed the computer.

The three of them headed back to the White House.

#

Even Velazquez’s I.D. almost wasn’t good enough to get them back inside. It took a personal call to Walter to get them through.

“As long as you stay out of my agents’ way,” he’d said. “But you’re not wasting their time chasing lights.”

Audrey hadn’t bothered arguing with him, or asking Velazquez to brief him.

She checked her watch as she hurried up the stairs, trying to keep up with Velazquez and Hooper while carrying the awkward equipment. The projector bumped her throbbing wrist. She winced at the pain. Cecily had now been three hours without her insulin. They were running out of time.

Inside Cecily’s room, the “Enchanted Oceans” coloring book was still face down on the carpet. The closet door was open. The blankets of her reading nest were strewn around beneath her hanging clothes.

“What do you think?” asked Velazquez. “Do I let him out on the wall?”

“He can’t move from floor to wall, can he?” asked Audrey. She thought about Mr. Flat rushing under the door, remembered Walter’s deafening gunfire. “He wouldn’t understand what he was seeing when he came to a wall.”

“That’s right,” said Hooper. “Although, this Mr. Flat is at least aware of the third dimension, so who’s to say.”

“Put him down on the floor,” said Audrey. “That’s where I last saw Mr. Flat.”

Velazquez set the square of sheet metal on the carpet. He pressed down on it, making it level with the carpet.

Hooper set up the camera and projector, each facing straight down, and hooked up the laptop. “Let’s see what he says.”

Audrey set the computer on her lap, and typed, “This is where I last saw him.”

The outcast explored the floor. Audrey tossed the blankets out of the closet so he’d have clear space to search. He paused in the corner, then returned to the camera to speak.

“At the edge, where it all stops. That’s where he is.”

“The hell he is,” growled Velazquez.

Hooper moved the equipment closer to the corner. “Maybe he means that’s where he left from.”

Audrey typed, “We don’t see him. Did he leave from there?”

The response: “I was wrong. I smell him like I smell you. Can’t you see him?”

Velazquez banged his fist on the wall. “All I smell is dirty laundry. There’s nothing here.”

The outcast jerked away from the corner. He dashed to the far end of the closet.

A splotch of washed out green shimmered across the wall.

“Was that him?” Hangers screeched against the rod as Velazquez shoved clothes out of the way.

The light vanished to reappear in the air next to the camera, then phased out of sight again.

Audrey turned around to see the whole closet. She bumped into Hooper. “You said they were two-dimensional.”

“They are!” Hooper grabbed an armful of Disney t-shirts and tossed them out of the closet. “Where’d he go?”

Mr. Flat reappeared, this time directly beneath the camera, but hovering above the carpet. His green glow wavered as he spoke through movement.

“Why is a Stained with you?”

The outcast inched further away. Mr. Flat moved toward him, and the outcast stopped.

Velazquez reached for the laptop. He whispered, “Let me talk to him.”

Audrey leaned over the computer. If she’d thought quicker, Cecily would be safe. It was her fault Cecily was in this mess, and it was her responsibility to get her out of it. She typed a response. “Where is Cecily?”

“Give me the laptop,” hissed Velazquez.

“Heaven,” read the monitor.

Audrey’s heart fell. “He’s killed her.”

“No,” said Hooper. “It’s like the outcast said, they used to think this was Heaven—our three-dimensional world. Now he thinks Heaven is a step beyond that. She’s got to be nearby; on a plane we can’t see.”

“Can she hear us?” asked Velazquez.

“Cecily!” yelled Audrey. “We’re here. Can you come to us?”

Mr. Flat raced through another message. “She is happy. How many more Stained are with you?”

“Can he hear us?” asked Audrey.

“I don’t know!” said Hooper.

“Don’t tell him anything,” said Velazquez. “We need the Tudors at least until we get their technology.”

“I hear you. How many Stained are with you?”

Audrey responded. “Give me back Cecily.”

“Stop answering without consulting me,” said Velazquez.

“You taint your world if you harbor the Stained. Tell me where they are, and I will cleanse you of them.”

Hooper scoffed. “What kind of psycho bullshit is this guy spewing? What does he care who we harbor?”

“Don’t say a thing about them,” repeated Velazquez.

“He can hear you, dipshit,” said Hooper. He flinched as he remembered who he was talking to.

“Stop focusing on the other Tudors,” said Audrey. “We can worry about them once we get Cecily back.”

“I am leaving and will take Cecily with me. She will grow more than she can here.”

Audrey felt her chance slipping away. She imagined Jason’s face when she’d tell him that she couldn’t save his daughter. “Leave Cecily here. She’s a child.”

“I will care for her like my own. The Stained tainted our space, and now yours. It is better where she is now.”

Audrey was helpless. Mr. Flat wasn’t a child to be reasoned with or punished. She didn’t understand what he was. “What if our world wasn’t tainted? Would you allow her to stay?”

“Don’t give him the upper hand,” said Velazquez.

“He already has it.”

“How can your world be untainted if you harbor the Stained?”

“Then take them.”

“Audrey, think about what you’re doing,” said Hooper.

Velazquez reached for the computer. Audrey kicked his hand away.

“I would miss the girl.”

“You would save our world.” The lie was manipulative and made her feel sick.

Mr. Flat remained silent for over a minute. Velazquez grabbed the computer. Audrey lunged after him, but he held her back.

Hooper grabbed Audrey’s shoulders. “It’s not just the technology. Think about all the Tudors. Mr. Flat is the one they need protection from.”

Audrey sunk to her knees. “What about Cecily?”

“We’ll find another way to get her back,” said Velazquez.

“After you figure out the Tudors’ technology? I know where your priorities are.”

Mr. Flat was speaking again but Audrey couldn’t see the screen.

“No, right now,” said Hooper. “Cecily is here somewhere on a plane we can’t see. There must be a way to reach her.”

“What about her blood sugar? She could already be dying. We need to find her now.”

“We can’t sell a hundred lives for one,” insisted Hooper. “But we’ll get her back.”

“How? You don’t even know what these things are. And even if you did, Mr. Flat is different.” The idea lingered. He was different. She raised her voice. “I’ll tell you where they are if you leave Cecily behind. I can care for her as well as you. I’m the woman who reads to her. I’m Audrey. She must have told you about me.”

Mr. Flat stopped moving. He nudged toward her.

“Shut her up!” ordered Velazquez. He and Hooper lunged for Audrey.

She yelled the address of the warehouse.

The NSA agents stopped. It was too late.

Mr. Flat flickered out.

Audrey caught her breath, chest heaving. Velazquez clenched his hands, his face even tighter. Hooper looked at her with a mix of disgust and horror. “They needed our help.”

Audrey forced herself to think only of Cecily. “I had to choose.”

He moved the projector next to the outcast by the closet door, and banged a message out of the keyboard. Audrey didn’t bother watching what he’d typed. Some trick of the shadows was happening in the corner. Both walls seemed to extend forever, while simultaneously meeting and ending. A pattern like two facing mirrors repeating, but looping back on itself to have never occurred.

Cecily rubbed at her eyes.

She climbed down from a space that wasn’t there. Audrey scooped her up, ignoring the pain in her wrist. The girl squinted at Audrey. “Everything looks funny.”

“Is she okay?” Hooper rushed to their sides.

“Can you imagine what she’s seen?” said Velazquez. “What we could have seen?” He got on his phone, yelled at agents to secure the warehouse.

“Where’s her insulin?” asked Hooper.

Audrey pointed to a small fridge in the bedroom.

She held Cecily, buried her face in her hair, and tried not to think about the glowing souls who’d sought their help.

Call You Again

(Originally published in Candlelight, an Anthology of the Supernatural, 2008)

Architecture is a vicious, insensitive thing.

The design of a house can provide for easy eavesdropping from room to room. Architecture can destroy any imagined privacy. In fact, architecture can take one's business and thrust it into the face of another, whether or not the latter person is truly interested.

Take, for example, the arrangement of my room, and my younger brother, Sam's room. I can hear just about any conversation that goes on in there, but for him to hear me I would practically have to yell. Something about the architecture of the house does that.

I can't help but wonder how things would have gone differently if the architecture of my family's house was different. Perhaps, with different architecture, the horror that plagues me wouldn't exist. Or, at least, it would be plaguing someone else.

Like I said, anything that goes on in Sam's room, I can hear. Sometimes it's muffled, but I always hear it. Before last week, every evening Sam would listen to the Melissa Nite Spot, this pop radio show that always ended up being more talk than music. Melissa's voice would often carry through the walls, and I constantly asked Sam to turn the volume down. Sam would talk to Melissa. I know it sounds a little crazy, but it wasn't. Not then. Sam would laugh and tell her she was a fool, or perhaps that she was cool. I couldn't quite tell, and either way, I wasn't too worried about it.

Melissa wasn't the only girl in Sam's life. Sam's heart belongs to a girl named Cynthia. You know those couples who turn heads in the school hallway? That's them. Neither are stunningly attractive, but together they create this essence that says, "Look at us! We're in love and we love it!" When they hooked up last year, they were freshmen, I was a junior, and no one was surprised. The general reaction was that it was about time.

Anyway, two weeks ago I was sitting in my room, trying to read and understand Poe's "The Raven", when I began to hear singing from Sam's room. Sam and Cynthia had gone in there about fifteen minutes before and I had assumed that it would be quiet for a while, if you know what I mean. So this song came on the radio "Call you Again" by BML, and when the chorus started I could hear the young lovebirds singing along. When you call / I'll always answer / Should you fall / I'll lift you up / When you survive this disaster / I'll guide you home.

It was kinda creepy. Like I could hear them singing right in my ear, even though the sound waves had bounced from his room, through the vents, into my room. But I laughed it off, and went back to reading about Poe's talking bird. I stopped when the music cut off.

"You promise?" I heard my brother say.

"Of course." Cynthia responded. Promising, I assume, to answer if he called.

Cynthia didn't make it home that night.

While driving past the Baptist Church on Wellmark Street, a drunken old man crossed the median and hit her head on. Both drivers were alone, and both were dead when the next car pulled up, twenty minutes later.

Fate is apathetic. Architecture is vicious and fate is apathetic.

Reporters loved the story. Nothing grabs the public's attention more than a previously-respected elderly citizen and a high school beauty dying in the same night. In the same car crash no less. It was a town tragedy and everyone felt entitled to mourn. But they weren't. To me, it seemed like only Sam should have that right.

Fiendish newsmen wanted Sam's opinion on this break from weather reports and human interest stories about school fundraisers. I wouldn't let them ask him for it. I inscribed this message in the grain of a few fist sized rocks and delivered them through the front windshield of any news van that pulled into our driveway.

Two nights after the accident, Sam turned on his radio again. Every night until I fell asleep I would hear the soft drone of Melissa's voice, and the deeper drone of Sam's voice. Sam's mourning confused me. The depression should have thrown off his habits and daily routines, but there he was, conversing with the local DJ. I wish my confusion there had been the end of it. But then I wouldn't be sharing this story.

The funeral was two days later. There were dozens of strangers, and the casket was closed. People spoke and people cried. Sam didn't, though. He sat through the ceremony with a sort of curious indifference on his face. At one point, one of the stranger's cell phones rang and the man we didn't know left the funeral he didn't really care about. Sam's gaze followed the man until the door to the chapel shut out the stranger. Sam leaned over to me and asked with real curiosity, the first real emotion he had shown for a week, "Who do you think that was?"

"The face behind the yellow tape, Sam." I put my arm around my baby brother. "An indifferent face in the crowd."

Sam stared at me for moment, puzzled. His expression turned to realization, and then to disappointment. "Not him. The person he was talking to." But as Sam spoke, the speaker at the pulpit stepped down and the choir began to sing.

Afterwards, at the dinner for family and close friends, Cynthia's mother came up to Sam.

"Thank you so much for coming," She spoke on the verge of tears, "This must be as hard for you as it is for us."

Sam's head tilted, as if he didn't quite understand what this woman was saying. "Did they find Cynthia's cell phone at the crash?"

Cynthia's mother's head twitched back just an inch, and she opened her mouth, but her tongue had forgotten how to form words.

I decided it was good time for me to step in. "Sam's been taking it pretty hard." With my arm wrapped around Sam's shoulder we made our way back to our table. "What was that about, Sam?"

Sam gave me one of his increasingly common looks of puzzlement and told me as if I were foolish for asking, "I wanted to know. She had it when she left our house. I wanted to know if she had it when they found her."

That night, last night, while I was trying to sleep, Sam turned off his radio and came into my room. He sat down at the foot of my bed and began to speak. "I talk to Cynthia."

The bright, lime-green numbers of my clock informed me that three minutes had gone by before I could think of anything to say. "I suppose that's okay. I'm sure that there are a lot of things you wish that you could have told her before..." I hesitated. Before what? Before the girl that you were in love with was crushed between the steering column and the front seat? "...before what happened."

Glowing green with the light of a Sony clock/radio, his eyes locked onto mine. "She talks to me." And then his eyes could no longer hold the force of the tears that had been pressing against them for so long. He buried his face in his hands and sobbed. I crawled over and put my arm around him. He continued to sob with his head in his hands and lonely trails of thick tears feeling their way down his forearms. The dissonance of his crying became eerily more rhythmic, and I soon realized he was singing through his tears.

"When you call, I'll always answer. Should you fall, I'll lift you up. If you survive this disaster, I'll guide you home."

He repeated this a few times, and then shortened it to: "When you call, I'll always answer."

He repeated this a few times, and then stood up. He walked back to his room singing. "I'll always answer, I'll always answer, I'll always answer."

I sat on my bed and heard the door to his room shut. His footsteps created the sound waves that easily reached my ears as he moved around his room. Soon I heard the soft voice of Melissa conversing, once again, with the deep, muffled voice of Sam. I decided that this was unhealthy. Sam needed to stop speaking with a DJ that couldn't hear him and he needed to talk about his problem with someone who could help. I walked to the door of Sam's room, knocked, opened it, and stuck my head inside. "Sam? Could you turn your radio off?" I glanced at the only radio that Sam kept in his room.

The radio was off. The little red light that professed power was unlit. The female voice that I had been hearing was not coming from the radio. Sam was sitting across the room on his bed. There was no possible way that he could have cut off the radio and then gotten to his bed quickly enough for me not to notice. It was then that I saw that Sam was clutching his cell phone in his right hand. He held it just to the right of his chin, as if he had dropped it from his ear when I opened the door. His eyes were those of child caught doing something he knew was wrong. I didn't know what to do; I didn't know what to say. I walked away from Sam's room and returned to my bed.

That was last night. Tonight I sit here on my bed, scribbling furiously into a notebook. Again, Sam's voice, and the voice of a female are drifting into my room. A few hours ago I picked up Sam's cell phone and tried to check the record of calls. The only calls were outgoing to Cynthia. They didn't stop with her death. Earlier today I looked up hallucinations in a few psychology books. Some say to approach the problem directly; others say to do it with caution. But, I had no real reason to do that. I'm no shrink. I was just postponing any real action. Because I'm afraid. Sam is not talking to Melissa. Sam is talking to Cynthia. No. Sam thinks that he is talking to Cynthia. But if it's only in his mind, who does that female voice belong to? Sam isn't close to any other girls that I can think of. Except for Cynthia. I know it sounds crazy, but here's what I can't accept has happened. I'm worried that Sam called Cynthia and she answered. She was bound by her promise, and she answered.

Maybe I'll go to the site of the accident and look for Cynthia's cell phone. Maybe if I find it, I can prove that nothing surreal is happening. Prove it to Sam and prove it to me. After that, I don't know what I'll do.

Architecture is vicious and fate is apathetic.

Lord, help me; I do not know what to do.

Radiation

Radiation

Owen pulled the yellowed photograph from his tattered jacket pocket. It showed him and Nancy smiling in front of the theater. Now Nancy had called and asked to meet again. On a landline, of course. Billboards still advertised the dangers of long term cell phone use, but that was like warning a bleeding child about gun safety.

A burnt out hydrogen station stood on the corner, a pile of blackened cinderblocks. Just another failed technology. For several blocks in every direction the buildings lay in piles of bricks and beams. A body lay among the rubble, unburned. Owen looked away. The city rose on all sides of the destroyed lots, whole, but empty. A man stumbled across the street some five blocks away. The first person Owen had seen all day.

Owen walked the other direction, to the theater where he and Nancy had met, twenty years before. She was with another guy, but Owen struck up a conversation while she waited in line for popcorn and soda.

A pigeon took off, sending chips of brick tumbling to the ground. They crashed against the pavement, sound exploding into Owen’s head. His dull headache jolted to an intense pounding. He shut his eyes and rubbed his temple, willing the tumors behind his ears to stop twitching.

He entered the theatre, hoping to see Nancy waiting for him in the foyer. Instead only a busted refreshment counter and half burned movie posters greeted him. He met Nancy here for their first date, found her clutching her scarf nervously. He’d been late and tried to call her on the way, but quickly discovered she’d given him a home number.

Owen headed upstairs, to the balcony. They sat in the highest row that night. She marveled about the historical significance of the balcony. He just wanted to get her alone. Afterward he drove her to a drugstore, where he bought her a prepaid phone. They spent the rest of the night with their phones against their ears. Owen rubbed his ear now, felt the bulge of cancer that would kill him within the year. Like the rest of the empty city.

Each step to the balcony extended further into darkness. Owen groped along the wall at the top of the stairs. He reached the end of the corridor, sensed the theatre expanding before him. He’d broken up with her here as well, leaving her standing in front of the ticket counter.

“Nancy?” he whispered, straining to see. A seat squeaked. “I was so happy you called.”

Footfalls came toward him.

“I’ve got tumors. Behind both ears. I guess you do too.” He tried to hear movement. “I’ve been thinking about you, Nancy. We got into this together. I want to be with you at the end, too.”

Then Nancy leaped toward him, screaming “you killed me you killed me,” over and over. She stabbed him in the chest. Metal scraped between his ribs. The pain couldn’t compete with the tumors. But blood loss still took its toll. He touched Nancy’s lips, the most strenuous thing he’d done all day. They were just as he’d remembered, soft and smooth.

“I just wanted to be with you at the end,” Owen whispered.

Nancy snarled and twisted the knife. And before he fell, some stream of electricity reached the chandelier. It illuminated Nancy’s rotten, cracked face, showed tumors spreading out her ears and cheeks. Pain worse than anything he’d felt before erupted in his chest, and he fell over the balcony.

Boogeyman

It occurred to me the other day that the reason we pass off little children’s fear of the monster in the closet is because we are used to it. As parents, we expect our children to have some unfounded fear of something, and therefore we treat their fear as if it was all in their head.

I don’t agree with that. It seems to me, that since so many children have the same fear, we ought to give that fear some merit. Usually, when so many people have such a firm belief in something, we at least accept it. Few people would think of convincing a person that there is no Jesus, or that there was no Muhammad, or that there will be no Messiah. People accept these things, mainly because someone older and wiser told them to.

But people don’t listen to their children. Instead of listening, instead of believing, or even accepting their belief, we tell our children that there is nothing in the closet. Sometimes we play along, but only to quell their fears. This may be the biggest mistake that any parent will ever make. I know it’s the biggest regret that I carry.

The first night my son, Matt, had a nightmare was probably the beginning of everything. My wife, Lynne, and I woke up to him screaming, and it was quickly decided, (by Lynne) that I should be the one to go comfort him.

I walked across the hallway into his room, and found a seven year old trembling lump of blanket atop of Matt’s bed. “Matt, it’s me. What’s wrong?”

The blanket slowly was slowly pealed back, revealing a little boy beneath it. He wiped a tear and sniffed. “The boogeyman wanted to get me.”

I sat down next to him. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Suddenly, Matt burst into tears. “I’m not ready, Daddy. Don’t go, I’m not ready.”

I held my little boy close, “What? I’m not going anywhere.” But my words wouldn’t console him. I held him as he cried, somehow believing that I was a horrible father for not knowing how to convince him that there was no monster in his closet. He was already holding his favorite stuffed animal, a T-Rex named Tommy. Patting Tommy on the head, I whispered to Matt. “Look at Tommy.” His crying slowed. “What is Tommy?”

Matt looked up at me. “A T-Rex.”

“That’s right. And a T-Rex is much bigger than any boogeyman, isn’t he.”

Matt seemed to realize the logic in my reasoning. “Yeah.”

“So you don’t need to be afraid of any boogeyman in your closet, do you?”

With a shake of his head he agreed with me, and he held Tommy close to him.

“Are you ready to go back to sleep?”

“I don’t want to. Will you play with me?”

I quickly figured out how much sleep I could get if I spent another half hour with my son. I would be all right.

“What should we play with?”

“Ninja Turtles.” He walked across his room, keeping a weary eye on his closet. He brought back three generic ninja action figures that were certainly not Ninja Turtles.

“Those aren’t Ninja Turtles,” I perceptively pointed out.

“Daddy,” he spoke to me as if I were the younger one. “I know they’re not Ninja Turtles. But I’m pretending.”

“Oh of course,” I grinned, “Let’s play with Ninja Turtles.”

The next night I once again woke to Matt screaming. I rushed into his room, and once again sat at his bed. He peered at me from under his blankets. “Tommy wasn’t big enough, Daddy. Tommy wasn’t big enough.” His stuffed dinosaur lay next to his bed, ripped apart and bleeding white foam.

“Matt,” I scolded, “What did you do?”

But before he could answer, the sound of his closet door opening came from behind me.

I turned around. “Tommy,” I whispered, “Did you let one of your friends sneak over?”

“Daddy, it’s him. It’s the boogeyman.” He covered himself with the blankets again. “I’m not ready Daddy. Don’t go, I’m not ready.”

I stepped towards the closet, moonlight pouring in through the window behind me. My hand reached for the doorknob, and slowly pulled it open. Suddenly, I was thrown backwards.

Dozens of board games and puzzles fell around me. The top shelf had broken. I stood up, and turned back to Matt. “See. It was just a few games. The shelf must have broken.” The window was open. “Matt, was that window open before?”

Matt said nothing. I cleaned up the games, shut the window, and sat next to my son. I spent the rest of the night sitting with him.

The third night Matt’s fear woke him up, some of that fear made its way over to my room. Some part of me did not want to go into that room. “Lynne,” I whispered, “It’s your turn.” Lynne got up and walked to the howling child.

Just as I was falling back to sleep, I heard a scream that was not Matt’s. I rushed to see why my wife had screamed, and found her crouched in the doorway. “Lynne, what happened? Are you okay?”

“There was something over his bed. It was a man, or something. It was crouched over him and he wasn’t making any noise.”

I leapt into the room and found my boy on his bed. He had a pulse, but he wouldn’t wake up.

I felt the chill of the wind blowing in through the window, across the room to the open closet door.

*

Matt returned from the hospital a few days later. The doctor determined that he must have gotten his blankets caught over face, blocking him from breathing. He told me it was a good thing Lynne got there in time to get the blankets off of him in a way that suggested he thought that it was my wife or me that had put the blankets on him.

It has been a month now since Matt has woken up screaming with dreams of the boogeyman. It has also been a month since Matt has asked me to play Ninja Turtles with him. We play with his generic action figures, but I’ve never been able to convince him that they are Ninja Turtles. The other night, I told him that his newly repaired Tommy the T-Rex would be there to protect him from any monsters. He told me that it was just a stuffed animal, and stuffed animals aren’t alive. In fact, during the past month, Matt hasn’t pretended anything. He still runs around outside, but he’s never out to save a princess or stop the evil space tyrant. He just runs around with his friends.

It seems getting rid of the boogeyman has its price.

Don’t leave me, Matt. I’m not ready, don’t leave me.

Desperation

Hours after the stranger in the bright orange overcoat walked into the bar and broke his nose, Vin lifted his head and wondered where he was.

A digital clock bathed the surrounding few feet in a dull green glow. It illuminated only the vague shadows of two beds. Vin tried to stand but something restrained him.

He was back in the hospital. Had rehab been a dream? Would he have to go through that hell again?

Vin struggled against his restraints. The old soreness in his side and leg raged into a hot pain. He gasped.

Old soreness. Not the hospital.

A hotel room. He had been in a bar, not at a hotel.

The asshole in the bright orange coat. He came in the bar, knocked Vin’s drink to the ground, whipped his elbow across Vin’s face. Before Vin could stand, the asshole strode out of the bar. Vin followed the man around the side of the building, then…then he awoke here.

He struggled to stand again. A bed sheet twisted around his body.

“Ropes might have left marks,” a voice said from in front of Vin. “You’re still recovering from the accident, aren’t you?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

A man stepped into the swampish light and shouted. “Who am I? You don’t know who I am?”

Vin clenched his teeth.

The man pointed a revolver at Vin’s forehead.

“You sure you don’t want to guess who I am? The right answer might save your life.” He barked a laugh. “Then again, maybe it won’t.”

Vin’s mind raced. “You’re from the bar. You came in and broke my nose with your elbow.”

“Oh. From the bar, he says.” The man scratched his chin. “But he can’t remember if he might have seen me before. Maybe because he was drunk out of his mind the first time, and hopping around to cover his ass the second time.”

Martin. Martin something. The man from the accident.

“But now he can’t even remember my name. You know, that pisses me off.” He pressed the barrel between Vin’s eyes. “Nah. I’ve got a phone call to make.” He turned back to the darkness and tucked the revolver into his back pocket.

The gun fell. Vin held his breath. Martin didn’t return. Vin wiggled his shoulders, but the sheet held tight. He clenched his fists. His finger brushed a loose corner of the sheet. Just another inch and he could grip it. He stretched. The old soreness stirred in his side. His bruised fingernail snagged. Pain danced from his fingertip into his hand.

Shit. He was stuck. Only another half inch. Push through the pain.

Vin thrust his arm forward. The loosened fingernail ripped away. Fire erupted in his hand. It rushed up his arm and filled his body. The clock advanced several minutes before the pain retreated to his finger.

He gripped the sheet and pulled. In moments it lay crumpled on the floor. He snatched the revolver.

The cylinders were empty.

Vin groped around the carpet. His bloodied finger brushed metal. A single round. He slid it into the cylinder. Chambering the round made Vin feel like he was already free.

A shadow flew across the room and knocked the pistol into the darkness. Martin dove after it. Vin crouched, prepared to leap. Martin whirled and aimed the revolver at Vin’s chest.

“I just called the police, you know. Don’t look surprised, we don’t want them to have any trouble with this case. You know about the legal mumbo jumbo they have to deal with. You’ve weaseled your way through that before.” Martin laughed. His grin slipped. “Move on, they said. Join a support group. Learn to be happy again.”

Vin’s heart pounded. He had not meant to get that smashed that night. Joey was supposed to have driven. Shit, he was going to die because Joey left early.

“The problem is, me being happy does nothing to help my dead wife and daughter. The state should have charged you with murder.” Martin turned the gun on himself. “Now they will.”

The shot cracked across the room. A window shattered.

Martin’s body fell back. The shadows reached to welcome the mangled man in, leaving only his legs in the jade light. Blood weaved along them, fleeing the darkness.

The doorknob rattled. Someone demanded to be let in.

Vin ignored him. He focused on the revolver and round with his fingerprints, the gloved hands of his attacker, the orange coat that everyone at the bar would remember, and a quiet, decaying sense of desperation.

Lacerare Suonare

It's a nonsensical place for an art installation, but the patron promised blood, and the critics and aficionados are anxious to test her sincerity.

They groan at the isolating distance: thirty-three miles past San Bernardino, to the mountain town of Coleridge, where the blue collars toil in the mine, while the white collars toil in the plant that converts the mine's treasures into eight-million-dollars-per-unit, FentCorp brand sonic drills.

But Fiametta Vine revealed her latest beneficiary -- God knows how she found him out here -- and if he's anything like her previous pet who installed a progression of binocular viewing stations, each augmenting the Hollywood sign more discomfortingly than the last, then today's display will warrant fleeing the comfort of Los Angeles.

They arrive Sunday morning. The installation is in the Coleridge High gymnasium. At first, FentCorp security blocks the doors, citing "stolen materials," but Fiametta's private detail manhandles the suits back to their cars.

The guests enter the lobby, where three metallic voices repeat three distinct lines. Their words are etched into a slate canvas which hangs from the ceiling.

Lacerare Suonare, by Raul Portman.

Lasciare suonare. Italian. Musical notation. "Let ring."

Lacerare. Italian. "To lacerate."

The critic from the L.A. Times notices the voices are emanating from the etched letters. He touches Lacerare. The voices waver. "It's vibrating."

The awed crowd closes to feel for themselves, until Fiametta says, "This way, please. Raul is anxious to begin."

Through the doors, and into a tunnel. Dark burlap walls, roofed by black plastic that crinkles in the breeze of the air conditioner. The Arts & Music columnist for LA Weekly will describe it as a "clumsy but claustrophobic recreation of the Coleridge mine."

Tinkertoy models of molecules are mounted on the canvas. Atop a table rests a papier-mâché sculpture of a FentCorp drill.

Fiametta picks it up. "Raul has asked me to participate."

The guests flinch, remembering her promise.

She touches the drill to a Tinkertoy molecule. All the models drone a dissonant chorus of single notes, devolving into a rattle. The constructions collapse. Wheels and rods clatter to the polished floor.

"Really?" The editor of Art News, who flew from New York, knows Fiametta only through reputation and thus lacks the locals' confidence in her.

Still, murmurs of agreement. Everyone knows how FentCorp's sonic drills work; they dominated last summer's news cycle. The art critics' counterparts in the manufacturing and tech industries speculated FentCorp's invention would revolutionize the world.

Then the New Yorker published a scathing commentary that destruction was easy; the inventor's maxim was to build a better hammer, not a better wrecking ball. The cultured world fell in line, and FentCorp slunk back to corporate blandness, developing unfashionable uses for their invention like energy storage and anti-bunker missiles.

The papier-mâché drill crumbles in Fiametta's hands. Guests exhale. The execution is awkward, but they're always game for a good subversion of corporate profiteering.

Fiametta leads them around a corner to hums and low voices. The walls open into a room with a high ceiling like a circus tent. It's filled with installations.

A copper-etched pastoral scene whispers wind.

A cardstock love note hums a romantic ballad.

A Mickey Mouse mobile sings a gritty falsetto lullaby.

The guests spread out. Some are already counting the likes and shares they'll receive when they publish their rebuttals to that New Yorker hit piece on this obviously revolutionary artistic medium.

Fiametta cuts short their marveling to shepherd them around the next corner.

The false walls and ceiling give way to the Coleridge High gymnasium.

Raul stands atop a stage. He's what they expected from a small-town artist worth noticing: late thirties, graying stubble, muscled but worn from decades of physical labor.

Next to him, on a table, is a real FentCorp sonic drill.

He regards them with cool detachment they interpret as the respect due from a blue collar seeking the elevation only they can grant.

Raul undresses. Dark lines mark his skin in patterns parallel and circular. The Portland Mercury critic will compare them to the tattoos of Tongan warriors, although he will be thinking of Inuit matriarchs.

The differences being that Raul's markings are from a grease pencil, and each is labeled with a number between one and ninety.

Raul picks up the sonic drill. He brings it to a line on his chest marked "45," at the labeled angle. The drill whirls. He traces from his sternum to the bulge of his hipbone, leaving behind a warm bass note.

Fiametta hands Raul a rag to wipe away the blood.

Raul cuts from elbow to shoulder, at an angle shallow as a plane landing. The bass note is joined by a baritone croon.

He circles his knuckles, each wound adding a chirpy overtone.

The Los Angeles Magazine columnist tears up. Raul's carved melody reminds her of her first Dada installation. Now, instead of discovering an established branch of art, she's witnessing one's birth.

It turns out the Free Press blogger is a hemophobe. After Raul wrings the rag into a bucket, she runs for the exit to vomit onto the grass.

Slowly, Raul replaces every grease pencil line with a miniscule canyon with vibrating walls of skin. He sets down the drill to let his lacerated composition ring.

In that week's columns, posts, and reports, the critics try to evoke the experience of hearing Raul's body thrum symphonically. They fail, but still implant a curiosity that drives thousands of citizens to Raul's installation, each one longing to be accepted by the critics and aficionados. It's lucrative enough for Fiametta to purchase the drill to end the disagreements about ownership.

Musical tattoos become widespread, along with toys, greeting cards, and garden sculptures. Etched wallpaper catches on.

The New Yorker lauds the phenomenon as "corporate appropriation."

That quarter, FentCorp stock rises seventy-three percent.

Test Your Knowledge

Author’s Note: This one isn’t traditional horror, but I decided to include it in anyways. In a way, I find it the scariest out of any of these stories—the idea of every word you speak being misunderstood scares the hell out of me. Enjoy.

Theodore clutched his notebook, eyed the most recent entry – Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He picked cookie crumbs off the plate his mother had brought him, and sipped his milk. His heart beat faster. The doctor said he had to watch his blood pressure – what was a thirty-year-old unemployed man doing that could be so stressful?

The TV ads for cleaning products switched to network ads, and Theodore knew Test Your Knowledge was about to return. Barry Maxley's flashy grin and molded black hair appeared on the screen.

"And we're back!" Barry and Theodore said together.

"For those of you just joining us," continued Barry by himself, "Mary and Jeremy are tied at ten thousand seven hundred dollars, with Anita at nine thousand nine hundred. But with this final question worth on thousand dollars, this is still anybody's game."

"Theodore!" shouted Mom from the next room. "Dinner!"

"I'm not hungry!" he yelled back.

"No you can't have five more minutes. Dinner's ready now."

Theodore leaned toward his television.

"For the benefit of the audience, I'll repeat the final question one last time, then ask the contestants to reveal their answers. Which eighteenth century British poet wrote of Kubla Khan's Xanadu? Mary?"

"Percy Shelly," said Mary. Her answer appeared on the screen at the front of her podium.

"Jeremy?"

"Jonathan Swift," said Jeremy.

"He's not even a poet," yelled Theodore.

"No you cannot have dinner in your room," shouted Mom.

"Anita?"

"Samuel Taylor Coleridge," said Anita.

Theodore brandished his notebook in triumph.

"The correct answer," declared Barry Maxley, "is Samuel Taylor Coleridge!"

Anita and Theodore cheered.

"What an amazing, come from behind victory," said Barry Maxley as the credits started to roll. "Remember, Test Your Knowledge is filmed right here in downtown Richmond, so if you'd like to be in the audience, drop us a line at 804-"

Theodore switched off the TV. He placed a checkmark next to today's answer, and flipped back through the notebook. He'd answered 94% of Barry's questions correctly before today's episode. He quickly added the questions from today into his calculations. 95%. He was ready. Tomorrow he would go down to the station to try out.

A plate of rice-a-roni and oven-warmed frozen fried chicken waited for him in the dining room. Mom and Dad sat next to each other at the head of the table.

"Theodore?" asked Dad. "Didn't you hear your mother calling?"

"I was watching Test Your Knowledge."

"Playing with your action figures is not a valid reason for being late to dinner," said Dad.

"No, Dad," started Theodore.

"Your father's right," said Mom.

"No, I was watching Test Your Knowledge. I wasn't playing with toys."

"Don't give me any lip," said Mom. "I'll have your father march you right back to your room and swat you."

Theodore shoveled rice-a-roni into his mouth. "Pass the salt," he said.

Father raised an eyebrow.

"Please pass the salt," said Theodore.

"Not tonight, Theodore," said Dad. "But I'll try to come home early tomorrow."

Theodore sighed, reached across the table to grab the porcelain cow with salt innards and holes in its head.

"Ask for something," said Mom, "before reaching across the table to get it."

Theodore stared at his plate, sprinkled salt on his chicken. He glanced at the end table next to the apartment's front door. "Did the mail come today?"

"Nobody called for you, dear," said Mom.

Theodore scooted his chair back and checked the end table. Coupon book, phone book, letter to Mom from her sister. None of his magazines had come. A year ago he'd realized that most of the questions on Test Your Knowledge came from National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian, and a few other magazines available at any bookstore. He immediately subscribed to them all (over the internet – talking to people over the phone could be maddening.) After a few months of studying the magazines and playing along with the show, Theodore began to believe he could win. And if he became twenty-thousand dollars richer, maybe Aileen would love him.

"Take your plate to the sink if you're done," said Dad. "Don't just leave it for your mother to take care of."

"Okay." Theodore rinsed off his plate and placed it in the dishwasher. "My People magazine didn't come today. I'm going down to the 7-Eleven to pick one up. Test Your Knowledge might have its pop culture category tomorrow."

"Pick up some milk on your way," said Mom.

Theodore stopped and stared.

"I don't see why that's so complicated," said Mom. "The grocery store is on the way to your guitar lesson."

Dejected, Theodore headed out the apartment door.

Aileen stood at her adjacent front door, unlocking the dead bolt. She wore exercise sweats. A pink headband held brown curls out of her eyes. Light freckles dotted pale skin. Theodore loved her.

"Oh, hi Theo!"

Theodore melted inside. He smiled and held up a hand in greeting.

"I just had the best run. All the way down to Belle Isle."

Theodore creased his brow.

"Yes I know it can be dangerous, but it's not dark yet, and I always carry this." She held up a can of pepper spray.

Theodore shook his head and grimaced, doing his best to convey – I'm not satisfied, but it's better than nothing.

"Of course, I'd feel safer if I could get someone to go with me. How was your day, Theo?"

He shrugged and tilted his head, biting his lip.

"As long as your heart's still beating, things can get better, right?"

Theodore nodded.

Aileen walked inside, called "Bye, Theo!" and shut the door.

Theodore headed downstairs and outside. He walked down Grace Street, admiring the early twentieth century architecture. He'd read about that in Architecture Digest. The 7-Eleven parking lot was empty which was surprising. Normally a dozen college students were in here, buying hot dogs and sodas. Theodore walked inside, nodded hello to the old lady behind the counter, and examined the magazine rack. He picked up a Sports illustrated – the show often had sports questions – and a Stuff. Mom wouldn't approve of the pictures, but the magazine was a gold mine of information on technology, automobiles, and movies. He looked for this month's Popular Mechanics, but couldn't find it.

He brought his magazines to the counter and dropped them onto the glass window that revealed lottery tickets.

"Will that be all?" asked the old lady. Her smile reminded Theodore of a caved-in jack o'latern.

Theodore nodded, then noticed a Popular Mechanics on the shelf behind the pumpkin lady. He stretched to get a better look. It was the current issue. He told himself he could do without it, that the chances of the Test Your Knowledge tryout test having a question from the current issue were not high. But there was a chance.

"Is that your magazine there?" he asked, pointing.

"Store's open twenty-four hours a day," she answered.

"No. That Popular Mechanics," he jabbed the air several times.

"Calm down, buddy. Don't be eyeing the safe like that."

Theodore felt his face flush. "That magazine. Behind you." He leaned over the counter, trying to reach it. "I want it!"

The clerk swatted his arm. "You stay on your side of the counter. I got my training. Pay attention to anyone eyeing the safe."

"I'm not eying the safe! I want that magazine. Look, I'll show you." He started around the counter, passing a display of brownies, and dozens of rotating hot dogs that waited for college students to come.

"You stay over there! I'll call the cops."

As Theodore came behind the counter, the clerk picked up the telephone. He stopped. She held a finger over the buttons, glaring.

"I just want the magazine." He showed her his empty palms.

"I can only get forty dollars out every two minutes," she said.

"Damnit!" he cried. He rushed toward her. She threw herself to the ground, screaming and mashing her fingers at the phone. He grabbed the Popular Mechanics, then snatched his two magazines and strode back around the hot dogs and brownies. He dropped a twenty dollar bill on the counter. As he left he heard the clerk whisper in to the phone, "Hello? Nine one one? I've just been robbed."

He hurried past the Greek deli across the street, and didn't slow until he was out of sight of the 7-Eleven. He couldn't go back there for a while. He'd have to find another place to buy his magazines.

He stopped and bought a rose from a street vendor, holding his index finger to show he only wanted one, and paying without speaking. He walked back home, watching the deepening shadows of the setting sun play against the rows of houses packed tightly together. Once inside, he stopped at Aileen's apartment and slipped the rose between the knocker and the door.

In the morning he would try out for Test Your Knowledge. In a few weeks he'd have a check for $20,000. No one could be as ready as him. He had the magazines.

His parents waited in the living room, and he realized he'd forgotten the milk. "I'm sorry," he said. "I forgot the milk."

"That's all right, honey," said Mom. "Just make sure you're back before dark tomorrow night. If you make a habit of staying out late, pretty soon the police will be escorting you home, telling your father and me about whatever shenanigans you've been up to."

"Now, now," said Dad. "I was out all night when I was his age."

Theodore tried to imagine Dad roaming the streets of Richmond at age thirty. "Do you know how old I am?" he asked his parents.

"Good night, son," said Mom. "Come here and give me a kiss before you go to bed."

He kissed Mom's cheek, and leaned down to hug her around the neck. Then he hugged Dad from the side, said "good night," and went to his room.

But he didn't go to bed. Instead, he studied his new magazines. Once he'd finished those, lingering only for a moment on the pictures in Stuff, he pulled cardboard boxes from under his bed and skimmed back issues. Reading the title of each article brought the facts inside streaming to the forefront of his mind.

Theodore opened his notebook to where he wrote categories, questions, and his statistics, but he'd already memorized everything.

He turned the lights out early. He was ready.

Morning brought butterflies to his stomach. Mom called him to breakfast, but he walked straight to the door. When he shut the door Aileen opened hers.

"Theo? Oh, good. It's you." She held the rose.

Theodore smiled.

"Did you give me this flower?" She twirled its blossoms against her lips.

He paused for a moment. The flower was a mistake. Now she would think he liked her, and things would only be awkward between them. But today he would try out for Test Your Knowledge. In a few weeks he'd be on the show. Then he'd be famous and rich. He bit his lip, heart pounding.

He nodded. Yes, I gave you the flower.

"I thought it was you." She leaned against her doorway, tilted her head against the frame. "When're you going to ask me out, Theo?"

If Theodore had been holding anything, he would have dropped it. Instead he only stared, terrified to say right now, let's go out now. After he was on TV. That's when he would ask her.

He shrugged and grinned, hoping to convey when you least expect it, but fearing he only came across as a nervous little boy.

"Well I hope you do soon. You're a nice guy." She wiggled her fingers goodbye, then went back inside.

Theodore floated down the stairs. The city buzzed around him as he walked downtown. He said goodbye to all the familiar scenes. They would be different when he passed them again. After today, he would be on his way to owning this city. And Aileen! Not that he'd own her, he would never say that. But she wanted to go out with him! He closed his eyes, imagining curling up with her in front of a fireplace and talking for hours about everything and nothing.

His knee clanged against a mailbox, causing giggles in a line of children waiting for their school bus. But he ignored the laughter that usually stung so badly.

The TV station stood on Main Street, towering over the bank. Theodore smiled at the security guard. The acne-scarred man wore a blue uniform, but the leather jacket over top didn't look standard issue. He eyed Theodore suspiciously as he walked through the metal detector. Theodore exhaled after the alarm remained silent, then noticed something dark and metallic beneath the guard's jacket. It was a pistol – the kind the police carried. That gun couldn't be standard issue for security guards.

The acne-scarred face watched Theodore walk down the hallway. Theodore kept his eyes straight ahead. Finally, he turned a corner. He stopped to catch his breath. He could do this. A year of studying magazines made him ready. Ninety-five percent accuracy when he played at home.

Fluorescent bulbs lit the off-white walls and yellow tiled floor. Theodore's dress shoes clicked with each step. He went to the fourth door on the left, remembering the instructions for trying out that he'd read online. He knocked.

A spectacled man, bald on top but with six inch curly hair on the sides, opened the door. "Can I help you?"

Theodore handed him a sheet of paper. I'm here to try out for Test Your Knowledge. I'm recovering from laryngitis, so my voice is a little rough today.

-Theodore Taylor.

There would be no mistakes today.

The bald man lifted his glasses and read the note. "You're Theodore?"

Theodore nodded.

"How're you going to try out if you can't talk?"

Theodore mimed pressing buttons with his index finger.

"Fair enough. Come on in. My name's Dennis."

Theodore followed Dennis inside. A drafting table stood in one corner, covered with magazines. A National Geographic lay open, with lines highlighted. Theodore wanted to pump his arm in victory, but restrained himself.

Dennis motioned to an old Mac in the corner. "The test's on there. Just boot it up, answer the questions. See if you qualify."

Theodore sat on a plastic folding chair, turned the computer on.

"It's a good thing you came today." Dennis flipped through the National Geographic, highlighter in hand. "I'm not sure how much longer we'll be on the air. Viewership is down. People are more interested in fake reality shows these days."

The screen in front of Theodore, finished loading, and a window appeared. Welcome, it read. He hurried through the legal agreements, and opened the test.

Which country has the highest yearly rainfall?

Theodore selected Brazil. Correct, read the machine.

"Make sure you go slow," said Dennis. "You only get one shot."

Theodore paused. He hadn't realized that. He took a deep breath. It didn't matter. He'd never intended to take the test more than once, anyways.

The next question he knew. Six questions in he could only narrow it down to two, but he guessed correctly. Fifty questions later he finished. Ninety-five percent correct, just as he'd expected.

Theodore leaned back from the computer. Dennis was sleeping at the drafting table, head buried in a glossy photograph of the Serengeti. Theodore cleared his throat.

"What? Huh?" Dennis rubbed his eyes, straightening the frames to his glasses that had bent between the table and his head. "You done?" He stumbled to Theodore's side, leaned on his shoulder and peered at the computer screen. "Well, damn. I'd say that qualifies." He slapped Theodore's back. "Let's look at the schedule and figure out when you'll play."

A middle-aged woman in a pantsuit burst through the door, carrying a clipboard. "Dennis, major emergency. Anita Marquez just went into labor, and her backup just got hit by a bus."

"Trust the bus," said Dennis.

"Hilarious. What are we going to do?" She noticed Theodore. "How well did he do? Did he qualify? Listen to me, who cares? Want to be on the show this afternoon?"

Theodore looked to Dennis.

"It's up to you. If you think you're ready – and your score looks like your ready."

"Well?" asked Jan.

Theodore nodded.

"Don't you speak?" asked Jan.

"Laryngitis," said Dennis.

"Then how can he be on the show?"

"They answer with their consoles," said Dennis.

"I know that," said Jan. "But how can Maxley chat with him after commercial breaks? Say something for me."

Theodore paused. Slowly, he said, "I'd really like to be on the show tonight."

Jan gasped and Dennis dropped his jaw. He looked nervously at Jan.

"Well," she said, laughing, "no one has spoken to me like that for twenty years. We might have to get together after the show. Have him in makeup in five minutes." She left.

"You've got some nerve," said Dennis. "That woman frightens me. And what was that about laryngitis? Your voice sounds fine."

Theodore shrugged.

"Filming starts in an hour. It's broadcast live, because we can't afford editors anymore. Try not to say anything embarrassing."

The makeup and hair artist (he pronounced it ar-teest) talked incessantly about his mother and the injustices that occurred in her bridge club. After he finished, both with the makeup and the social commentary, he presented Theodore to the mirror. Theodore thought he looked the same, except his hair was straighter.

Dennis met him again to take him to the stage. "Don't approach Barry Maxley. Wait for him to come to you. He's all smiles once the cameras start, but the guy is OCD. Everything's gotta be perfect. And that includes him deciding when he meets the contestants."

Theodore furrowed his brow.

"Don't ask me why, but the guy jumps at the drop of a pin. You'd think he'd been in 'Nam or Iraq."

A small crowd's murmuring echoed down the hall.

"Ideally you'd have been on stage an hour ago, before the audience showed up. But today hasn't exactly been ideal, you know?"

Theodore disagreed, but didn't say anything.

After watching Test Your Knowledge on TV for years, the set turned out to be disappointing. The audience couldn't have seated more than fifty people, and today empty chairs dotted the rows. The three podiums where the contestants stood were to one side of the stage. Their neon signs, each displaying one word of the show's name, appeared garish in real life. The other two contestants already waited behind their glowing stands. A freakishly tall black man who wore a white suit large enough to fit Goliath stood behind the neon Test sign. Next to him stood a short, dark skinned woman, dressed in Indian garb (what was that called, a sari? Theodore hoped that didn't come up in the questions). Her podium blared Your in bright orange.

Dennis led Theodore behind the podium labeled Knowledge. Theodore suddenly felt self-conscious about not wearing a tie.

"Just relax," said Dennis.

Nervous? Why would he be nervous? He was ready. He'd ace every question, and go home tonight twenty thousand dollars richer and ready to come back tomorrow. He'd invite Aileen.

"Do you feel ready?" asked Dennis.

"I feel like I've already won," said Theodore.

"A Toyota Corola. Why?" asked Dennis.

Theodore shrugged. So there'd still be a few kinks to work out tonight. The point was he'd be rich, and Aileen would love him.

"You're one bizarre son of a bitch, you know that?" said Dennis. "Anyway, the game works pretty easy. Maxley asks the question, gives you four choices, which appear on your screen." He pointed to the console on the podium. Four white rectangles stood against a black background. "This is a touch screen. Select your answer. When Maxley asks, say your answer aloud. Not that it matters what you say, since the computer has already locked in your choice."

Theodore's heart lifted a little more.

Jan walked by, clipboard in hand. "Show starts in sixty seconds, people."

"You'll do great," said Dennis, patting Theodore's shoulder. He hurried off stage.

The giant man and the Indian woman next to Theodore fidgeting nervously. Barry Maxley strode onto the stage, with a crisp blue suit and crisper black hair. He muttered to himself, but Theodore heard him, as the audience was obeying the Quiet sign. "Hello Richmond and hello America. Welcome to Test Your Knowledge." A man in a Braves hat behind the camera said, "we're on in five, four," and then he dropped his last three fingers, one a second. Barry Maxley flourished to face the camera.

"Hello Richmond and Hello America!"

The audience cheered.

"Welcome to..." he pointed at the audience who all shouted "Test Your Knowledge!" It wasn't nearly as loud as Theodore imagined, but he still found himself grinning and clapping furiously. He noticed the giant man and the Indian woman were still, so he stopped clapping.

"All right," said Barry Maxley. "Let's meet our contestants. First up, Thomas Hamilton!"

More cheers and applause. Several people in the front wearing chains and basketball jerseys grabbed their belts, pumped their fists, and shouted "Tommy!"

It occurred to Theodore that he should have called his parents.

"Looks like you've got quite the fan base, Thomas," said Barry Maxley. "Why are you playing today? What's the money going to if you win?"

"I'm sending my little brother to college," boomed Thomas.

More jumping and screaming, "Tommy!"

Barry Maxley ran a finger under his collar. "Let's move on to Mansi Patel."

Polite applause.

"Mansi, what are you doing with the money if you win?"

"Bringing my sister to America."

Louder polite applause.

"And last, but certainly not least, Theodore Taylor."

Polite applause, and to Theodore's surprise, a few cheers. He peered past the stage lights wondering how his parents could have discovered he was here and hoping they'd brought Aileen. Instead he saw Dennis clapping, hands above his head. A few other crew members had filled the empty seats.

"So Theodore," said Barry Maxley, "what are you playing for today?"

"A phone that can text. And Aileen."

Barry Maxley blinked. Thomas and Mansi turned to face Theodore. The crowd roared with laughter.

"Well," said Barry Maxley. "Let's get on with the show." He walked to center stage, pulled a stack of cards from his jacket. "Let's dive right in."

Theodore held his finger over the screen.

"Our first category is U.S. history. Which of these founding fathers adamantly opposed our current constitution? Was it Thomas Jefferson?"

Thomas Jefferson's name appeared in the first white rectangle.

"James Madison?"

Madison's name appeared beneath Jefferson's."

"Patrick Henry? Or George Mason? Select your answers now."

Thomas jabbed Patrick Henry.

"All right, contestants, let's hear your answers. Thomas?"

"Patrick Henry."

"Mansi?"

"George Mason."

"Theodore?"

He envisioned the answer appearing on the front of his podium, wished he could walk around to admire it. "Patrick Henry."

The audience exploded into laughter. Barry Maxley turned red. Theodore started to feel embarrassed, but realized the crowd wasn't ridiculing him. They were laughing like he told a joke. Theodore beamed.

"Well," said Barry Maxley, motioning to Theodore's podium, "you've selected Patrick Henry. The correct answer is...Patrick Henry!"

Cheers and moans from the audience.

"The next question: During the Civil War, which battle marked the heaviest losses for the northern Union forces?"

Thomas selected Gettysburg, but when he said it aloud, the crowd laughed again. Dennis clutched his gut and bent over, heaving from his laughter. One of the basketball jerseys in front fell out of his chair. But Theodore's selected answer was correct.

By the first commercial break Theodore lead Thomas $3,200 to $2,100. Mansi had only $1,500. As the audience talked amongst itself, Barry Maxley strode over to Theodore's podium.

"What's the idea, Taylor? Trying to get noticed? Gunning for your own HBO comedy special?"

Theodore shook his head.

"Then answer the questions and shut up." He stormed away.

The man behind the camera started counting down to five again. Barry Maxley said “…and we're back."

The lights went out.

Somebody yelled, “Run another commercial."

Barry shouted, “Whoever is responsible for this is fired."

Someone in the audience, who Theodore suspected was Dennis, shouted back, “Fire yourself, dickweed."

More laughter.

When the lights came back on, Barry Maxley stood directly in front of Theodore. "You think you're some kind of comedian? If you don't straighten up-"

Jan hurried over to the contestants. "Shut up, Maxley. The consoles are down."

Over Jan's shoulder, Theodore noticed the acne-scarred security guard walk backstage.

"What do we do?" asked Barry Maxley. "Cancel the show? That'll kill us."

"No," said Jan. "We'll run it by hand. I'll add up their scores with calculator. They'll just have to say their answers out loud."

Barry Maxley smiled at Theodore. "Think you can handle that, Steve Martin?"

Theodore's knees weakened. He leaned on the podium

"We're on in four," said the man in the Braves cap.

Barry Maxley jogged back to center stage. "And we're back."

"Again!" shouted Dennis.

Barry Maxley ignored him. "We're ready to start the second round. Mansi has fifteen hundred, Thomas has twenty-one hundred, and our comedian leads with thirty-two hundred."

Applause.

"Due to some technical difficulties, the contestants' verbal response is now what determines their answer. Let's dive right back in."

Theodore poked the blank screen. He moved his mouth, practicing forming words.

"Name the author of the Winnie the Pooh children's books."

Theodore's screen remained blank.

"Thomas?"

“Margery Williams.”

"Mansi?"

“A. A. Milne.”

"Theodore?"

He focused harder than he ever had before, making sure his tongue formed the right sounds. “A. A. Milne.”

The crowd laughed.

"I need a real answer" said Barry Maxley.

Theodore answered again.

Sparse, uncomfortable laughter.

"If you're not giving a real answer, we'll have to count that as wrong."

The crowd groaned.

Barry Maxley asked the next question, and Theodore answered firmly, but received the same result. Thomas was now tied with him. If he could just point to the right answer, he could win. He knew he could.

"Next question," said Barry Maxley. "In what year did the Miracle Mets come back to win the World Series? 1968, 1969, 1971, or 1979?"

Theodore's heart raced as the other contestants answered. He knew this! Everyone knew this!

"Theodore?"

"1969!"

The crowd murmured.

"C'mon, Theodore," said Dennis.

"1969!" he said louder.

"Again," said Barry Maxley, "we have to insist that you take the game seriously."

Theodore jabbed the screen in from of him. "1969!" he yelled.

Barry Maxley glanced at the security guard, who took a step toward Theodore, but stayed off stage.

"1969!" If he could just point to the answer, they'd understand. That was it. Barry Maxley's card had the answers listed on it. He strode around the podium that proclaimed "Knowledge," and toward Barry Maxley.

"Hey," said the host, backing away. "Stay at your station."

"I know that answer," said Theodore.

"Go to a commercial!" yelled somebody.

"Stay away," said Barry Maxley. He tripped, fell onto his back.

"1969!" shouted Theodore.

The acne-scarred security guard ran toward Theodore, leather jacket flapping behind him.

"I know the answer! I studied!" Theodore waved his arms.

"He's got a gun!" screamed Barry Maxley.

"No I don't!"

"Freeze!" yelled the security guard. He stood, legs spread, black pistol held in both hands. "Get away from Mr. Maxley."

"I don't have a gun," insisted Theodore.

Someone in the audience screamed, and all forty of them made for the exits at once.

Barry Maxley crawled backwards.

"I can point to the answer," said Theodore. "1969! It's 1969!"

"Don't move," commanded the security guard.

"Theodore!" shouted Dennis running up beside the guard.

"I know the answer! I studied the magazines!" He reached for the card still clutched in Barry Maxley's right hand.

Theodore felt the impact before he heard the pop of the shots. Someone punched him in the chest quick, three times. He touched his dress shirt. His hand came away bloody.

"Are you out of your mind?" yelled Dennis.

Theodore fell to his knees. He leaned forward, supporting himself on outstretched bloody fingertips. He tried to breathe, but only gurgled thick blood in his throat. "Nineteen," he rasped, "sixty-nine."

Dennis and Jan appeared at his side.

"Call 911," said Jan. She'd left her clipboard somewhere else.

"Where's his gun now?" shouted Dennis.

"I saw a gun," wheezed Barry Maxley. "He said he had a gun."

The security guard dropped his pistol, took a step backwards.

Theodore's knees gave out and he fell to his face. He spun his finger on the ground, drawing a red flower. "Aileen," he said.

“What did he say?” asked Jan. “Was that a name? Is his family here?”

Through the pain, Theodore felt a spark of hope.

Dennis faced the fleeing crowd. “Is there a Sarah here? He’s asking for Sarah!”

Theodore felt blood pool under him. It ran against his lips and spread up his arm, engulfing the rose.

Blogs and Bones

www.blog.myspace.jamescollegeman.com, entry dated September 3, 2005.

Ok. So I think I'll start a blog. I think my life might just qualify for the high standards that my blogging forefathers have set forth. I've had interesting things happen to me in Williamsburg (I swear.) Funny things happen down here. At least to me. And now, thanks to the miracle of blogs, everyone back home will get to know about them. I promised that I would keep all of my old friends up to date on my life, and now I'm fulfilling that promise. I should have plenty of stories to tell. I'm meeting up with this guy Sam in a few days. There's this tunnel that goes under a street, and nobody goes down there anymore, apparently they've closed it off. Sam and I are going to go down and see if we can't make friends with the gardener.

www.blog.myspace.jamescollegeman.com, entry dated September 7, 2005.

I went to meet up with Sam last night, and the craziest thing happened. I hung out at the top of the stairs for a while, waiting for him to show, but he never did. There weren't any cops around, so I crept down the steps to see if Sam had already gotten inside.

The entrance to the tunnel was blocked by a double-door, that I swear could have been three inch thick solid metal. The doors weren't locked themselves – the handles moved when I tried them – but the handles were chained together so that no one could get in. I crept back up the stairs, poking my head up first so I could see if there were any cops around. The coast was clear, so I came back up, and waited a few more minutes. I hoped that Sam brought a crowbar, otherwise there would be no way we'd get in. After five minutes I glanced across the street and realized that I might be able to get in from the other side. I jogged across the street - no wonder they closed the tunnel, the street wasn't exactly difficult to get across.

The stairs and door and the other side were identical, only on this side one of the doors was ajar, and the chain was broken and on the ground. Checking behind me, I cracked the door open and slipped inside. The darkness was too great for me to see anything. "Sam" I half-whispered, but I got no response. I crept forward, but the light didn't get any better.

Suddenly I was falling, and the cement floor leapt up and cut open my hands. "Shit! Sam where are you!?" I said slightly louder and reached back to see what I had tripped over. From what I could feel, it appeared to be a wooden box about six inches across, and filled with what me and Sam were going to smoke, I assumed. Something long and slender with a bulge in the middle rested on top of the box. I figured it was the crowbar, but it didn't seem heavy enough. As I picked both objects up, I noticed that the box was warm, and that crowbar-thing was covered in something wet, with chunks sticking to the sides. Since the box was warm, I figured that Sam had just recently put it down. He must have been clutching it pretty firmly, though, because it seemed as warm as a freshly delivered pizza box.

As I was about to leave, a hot breeze swam past me. I almost thought nothing of it, until I realized it hadn't came from either doorway. I stepped towards the direction the wind had come from, and reached out my hand. The wall was brick, but as I explored it, I found that there was a large hole, big enough for anyone to fit through. I reached through and felt the walls inside. From what I could tell, it was a large cement pipe.

"Sam," I called, loudly this time, but again I got no response. The wind came again, this time in small bursts, repeatedly brushing me with its moist warmth. There seemed to be some kind of pattern to the wind, and then it stopped. I'm not sure if it was because I was upset that Sam had left without waiting, or because I was a little creeped out by the tunnel and pipe under the campus, but either way I left, and I left quickly. I stopped on the stairs to inspect what it was that I had in my hand. The box was wooden, and oddly enough it was still warm.

The crowbar, though, that was not even a crowbar. It was a bone. About as long as my forearm, it was covered in blood and small pieces of what must have been meat. The strangest part, however was that there was knot in the middle of it. Not something like you see in a tree, but something like you see in shoe lace. Somehow, someone had tied a knot in a bone. This was too amazing of a thing to leave behind, so I took it, with the box, back to my room. I set the box down on my desk, and went into the bathroom to wash off the bone. I came back with a clean bone, and decided to put both the box and bone in my closet. The box was still warm. That kind of weirded me out, but I ignored it and just went to bed.

www.blog.myspace.jamescollegeman.com, entry dated September 14, 2005.

I haven't seen Sam for a week now. He's never online anymore, and he hasn't been to class. I don't remember what hall he was in, so I don't guess I can ask his roommate. I must have been wrong before, about the box. It's about two feet across; I'm not sure how I could have thought it was only the size of a textbook. There also seems to be some kind of carvings on it, but I can't really make out anything. I still can't figure out what this bone is, how it got there, or how someone tied a knot in it. Everyday this week I've taken the bone out and looked at it. It seems so familiar. Some days it seems like it might be a human bone. If there wasn't a knot it in, it would almost be the right length to be a shin bone. Maybe I'll try to find a biology professor, or someone who might know about that kind of thing. Sometimes when I'm looking at the bone, sitting in front my closet, I can almost feel that warm, moist breeze on the back of my neck. It was such a creepy experience, I'm not sure I'll ever forget that sensation.

www.blog.myspace.jamescollegeman.com, entry dated September 16, 2006.

Oh man, I'm so fucking scared.

About five minutes ago, a terrible scream woke me up. I swear it sounded like someone screamed "James, help me." It came from one side of my room, and once I saw no one was there, I ran to the next room and banged on the door. My neighbor opened the door and glared at me, daring to give me a worthwhile reason for waking him up. I looked inside the room, but the only other person in there was the roommate, squinting at me with the same look on his face as the one at the door. Neither of them had heard any screaming. For a few moments I thought I had dreamed it, but that was before I got back to my room. In the moment I had been gone, the air of the room had become sticky and warm. I turned and faced the wall I shared with those I had just disturbed. I knew I had heard something.

I realized I was staring at the closet door. It was slightly cracked, and I would have bet anything that the uncomfortable air was coming from inside. I would have won that bet. Air came out of the crack in small bursts, reminding me of that weird pattern from the tunnel. I stood inches from the closet, and felt the air against my face.

Suddenly, I realized what the pattern was. It was a long breeze, and then two shorter ones. I closed my eyes. Over and over again I felt it against my face, feeling for what the pattern might mean. The longer breeze seemed more drawn out, as if it was only a short syllable being stretched, as if it were trying to get someone's attention. The next two breezes were short, but they were strong. There was urgency in their message. I heard a whisper on the wind. I opened my eyes in shock. The burst continued to come, whispering now, in the same pattern of trying to grab my attention, and then screaming something at me, needed for me to understand. But I couldn't. There were definitely whispers, but I could not make them out. I reached to open the door, and suddenly I could understand. "James! Help me!" The whisper flew inside me, chilling my skin and sending my heart to overdrive. This was the same whispering from the tunnel. I ran from the room in nothing but shorts and sandals. I ended up in the library, sitting at this computer. I don't know what I'm going to do.

www.blog.myspace.jamescollegeman.com, entry dated September 21, 2005.

The student body got two emails from the dean of students last week. The first email informed us that there was a student who was now officially missing: Sam Frist. No shit Sam was missing. Missing in my fucking closet. The second email told us to remember that we were to stay out of the tunnel beneath the street. It was private college property, and anyone down there would be charged with trespassing. The other day as I walked by, I noticed college workers coming out from the tunnel with all sorts of tools. That night I went down, broke the chain, and went into the tunnel. This time I took a flashlight. There was new brick where there had been a hole. The college knew. Someone knew. They knew there was something down there. And I bet they knew it had something to do with Sam disappearing. There was more being covered up than a pipe.

www.blog.myspace.jamescollegeman.com, entry dated September 22, 2005.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. They know I know. My roommate work-ordered a broken shelf.

I came in for a book, and the man working stopped and looked at me. He motioned to my closet, "What's that in there?" The closet door was completely open. A wooden box was in there, but this couldn't be the same one. This was three feet wide and a foot high and barely squeezed in against the sides of the closet. But it was the same box. It was growing. I stared down the worker.

"Are you done?" I asked. He nodded. "Leave." He gave another glance at the box, and left the room.

He turned back, "You'd better watch yourself."

Once he was out of sight, a warm rush of air came pouring out of every side of the box. Not from the lid – I still haven't dared to open it – but from the sides of the box themselves. The box breathed a sigh of relief. The bone was missing. I ran after the worker, but he was gone. They took the bone. They're trying to cover up Sam disappearing. The bone had to be Sam's. That wasn't meat on the bone, it was Sam's muscle. What the hell happened to him?

www.blog.myspace.jamescollegeman.com, entry dated September 23, 2005.

Everything will be over soon enough. Someone just knocked on my door, looking for me. He said that I had school property. He must have meant that box. When I didn't open the door, he left. But he'll be back with a key. I only have a few minutes. My closet is cracking. I can hear it now; the box is growing and pushing against the sides. Or maybe it isn't growing. Maybe Sam is inside, pushing against the sides. Something happened in that tunnel before I got there. Something locked Sam in that box, and then it fled down that pipe, probably with Sam's body. Except for that one bone. Maybe it had a snack, I don't know. Whatever it was, it wasn't natural.

Nothing natural can tie a bone in a knot.

And nothing natural could be left over.

Whatever part of Sam was put into that box, I don't want to know what it will be when it gets out. That bone can't be the only part of him that was mangled.

The people are back, the people that know. They'll soon be finding out about the metal jammed into the lock, and then they'll try to knock down the door. They know. I don't think they're responsible, but they're trying to cover it up. The box is splintering; Sam will get out soon enough, maybe even before they knock down the door.

I'm going now. I have to destroy this computer so they won't know that I've told anyone about what I know. They'll be so surprised when they learn that I've told everyone about it. This can't go on much longer, but I think my part is done. I have to go.

Letter from the Dean of Students to the student body, dated September 25, 2005.

I'm afraid I must share some very sad and disturbing news with you today. Our missing student, Sam Frist, has been found. We discovered his body in the room of fellow student, James Thomas. It appears that James and Sam got into an argument that ended in Sam's death. It turns out James had many personal issues, and will hopefully now get the treatment he needs. I know you will all join me in mourning this most grievous of crimes. We will be holding a memorial service towards the end of the month – I will get back to you on the time and place.

Letter from the Dean of Students to the student body, dated November 3, 2006.

There will be some demolition work beneath parts of campus during the week. It seems that certain unused drainage pipes have become havens for various rodents. We think it will be in the best interest of our college community if the pipes are destroyed.

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