Summary: Wherein a certain young man takes a wrong turn on his way home from work one night, the tale of his last day on Earth…
Categories: Original Fiction
Characters: None
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction
Warnings: Death, Violence
Challenges: Series: Tradewinds
Chapters: 27
Completed: Yes
Word count: 35125
Read: 30880
Published: 02/24/11
Updated: 03/24/11
Story Notes:
The characters and events in this story are purely fictional. Any resemblance to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Much of the setting of this story is real, though used fictitiously, and creative license was taken with some places, as the author has never attended some of its institutions.
1. I by shadesmaclean
2. II by shadesmaclean
3. III by shadesmaclean
4. IV by shadesmaclean
5. V by shadesmaclean
6. VI by shadesmaclean
7. VII by shadesmaclean
8. VIII by shadesmaclean
9. IX by shadesmaclean
10. X by shadesmaclean
11. XI by shadesmaclean
12. XII by shadesmaclean
13. XIII by shadesmaclean
14. XIV by shadesmaclean
15. XV by shadesmaclean
16. XVI by shadesmaclean
17. XVII by shadesmaclean
18. XVIII by shadesmaclean
19. XIX by shadesmaclean
20. XX by shadesmaclean
21. XXI by shadesmaclean
22. XXII by shadesmaclean
23. XXIII by shadesmaclean
24. XXIV by shadesmaclean
25. XXV by shadesmaclean
26. XXVI by shadesmaclean
27. XXVII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
foreshadowing filibuster
“…and then there are some loonies who are really ready for the straight jacket. Atlantis? Space aliens? The military experimenting with the space-time continuum? When will they give it up? Nothing the least bit unusual happens to ships that ‘disappear’ in the so-called Bermuda Triangle. Nothing simply vanishes into thin air, or disappears without a trace. I mean, it has to go somewhere. And I really doubt it was some other ‘plane of existence’ or some other sci-fi-sounding nonsense…”
Dexter MacLean sat near the back of the classroom, trying to keep his eyes open as he glared at Chris Nimrod from behind mirrorized lenses. The wrap-around shades that were his namesake, and another story altogether. Shades stretched slightly, trying to stifle a yawn as Chris paused and adjusted his spectacles, proving that apparently even his wind was not without limit.
“…repeat, nothing vanishes without a trace. The ‘Bermuda Triangle’ is just hype, it’s no different than anyplace else in this world. Things happen. Ships sink. The weather changes violently in some regions. Some amateurs probably got lost in the middle of the Atlantic. I even read that one of the most famous ‘disappearances’ was just an error in the authorities’ records…”
Shades twiddled with the silvery triangular medallion he ordinarily kept tucked under his shirt, as he often did when he was feeling antsy. Slid up the sleeve of his denim jacket and checked his watch, seeing that he would still have to put up with another five or six minutes of this. For most of the semester, the clock on the wall was stuck at 4:20; so long, there wasn’t a joke left about it that Shades hadn’t heard a thousand times before. It wasn’t so much that he was against the overbearing dork expressing his opinion— it was free country, after all— as it was that he was against the overbearing dork taking half the period to express his opinion.
Though he tried not to laugh whenever Chris made “quotation marks” with his fingers every time he said the words Bermuda Triangle.
“…no need for any conspiracies when there are so many rational explanations. Serious scientific research, and I’m not talking about one of those crackpot ‘documentaries’ about it, has shown all of these ‘Bermuda Triangle’ stories to be either exaggerated or inaccurate. People fear what they don’t understand…”
Shades sighed and told himself to just roll with it. Just a few more minutes until class was over. Just a couple more hours until school was out for the week. Just another month until he graduated. It was hard to sit still anymore; he had held off months longer than most of his classmates, but now that it was finally upon him, his was fast becoming one of the worst cases of Senioritis in the entire Class of ’95.
Yet if Chris had Senioritis, he sure as hell wasn’t letting it show. Then again, Shades suspected that the Chris Nimrods of the universe were probably immune to it. And so Nimrod carried on. And on.
“…some people like to sensationalize everything, from aliens to Elvis sightings. The only people who are trying to prove all this mumbo-jumbo are the world’s most unbalanced and gullible. There is a logical, rational, scientific explanation for everything, and one day science will unravel all of the so-called ‘mysteries’ of the unknown…”
Shades tried to take some consolation from the fact that Chris was even putting Mrs Eastman to sleep. When he looked around, he couldn’t help wondering if Chris himself was the only one paying attention to the last portion of this speech. Of course, he doubted his classmates were too broken up about it; as annoying as this sophomore prodigy could be when he went full-bore, at least his lectures didn’t come with homework. He had burned up enough class time to ensure that there would be no extra work to do this weekend.
He looked out the window at the Rocky Mountains beyond, under a sunny blue sky that offered the promise of another Montana summer.
“Anyone else?” Mrs Eastman asked, looking among her students. The US Government teacher tried not to betray her relief, or her regret. She occasionally liked to have discussions about unusual topics, but not since her college days had she seen someone who could hold forth for as long as Chris Nimrod without panting for breath.
A girl in the second row raised her hand.
“Yes, Amy?”
Shades perked up noticeably at that name. Unlike Chris, he could listen to her all day. And he was especially keen on hearing what she had to say about a subject so near to his heart.
“I’d just like to say that most scientists are way too closed-minded about the paranormal,” Amy O’Connor remarked as she brushed some of her long blonde hair out of her face. Ordinarily content to leave the task of annoying the little know-it-all to someone else, for some reason she felt compelled to put in her two cents on this matter. “Since when did ignoring something just because it doesn’t fit in your explanation of reality solve any of the mysteries of—”
Then the bell rang.
Though Shades was looking forward to hearing her views on the paranormal; he had never dreamed he would ever hear her speak about such a bizarre topic. Now he wished he had said his piece earlier, perhaps he could have filibustered Nimrod and delivered his classmates from terminal boredom, but what was done was done. In middle school, he had written his first “practice” term paper about the Bermuda Triangle mythos; it was an easy extension, research-wise, of his favorite reading material. Though Mrs Eastman sometimes chose weird topics for her tangents, this was the strangest subject he could recall— a whole high school class (mostly Nimrod) spending forty-odd minutes discussing the Great Unknown.
Shades shoved his US Gov text into his backpack as he stood up. Throwing one strap over his shoulder, he turned and gave Amy the victory “V” for her upset against Nimrod. And she again gave him that quizzical tilt of her head, as she always did when he saluted her.
“Don’t forget, there’s a paper on the Civil Rights Movement due Monday!” Mrs Eastman called after her students as they filed out the door. More efficiently, she noticed, than they did anything else in her class. “Have a nice weekend!”
Shades caught the tail-end of that as he strode down the hall to catch his friend Arthur at his locker. He and Eastman got along alright, but she was more of a traditionalist in many ways, and being able to wear his specs in her class at all was a feat of persuasion he would never have accomplished without Arthur’s help. After all of his previous years debating with faculty (I won’t insult your intelligence, or the memory of great civil rights leaders, by comparing myself to Martin Luther King or Gandhi, but would you entertain Socrates?… he had to admit, Arthur was quite the speechifier), he had little trouble with most teachers anymore. Through a combo of a clean record, good grades, and (when necessary) a little passive resistance, he had won the right to wear his shades.
It had definitely been more of an uphill battle than his name. It took a couple arguments, but his moniker of “Shades” was settled before he was out of middle school. Which was fine with him, since he had always hated the name Dexter. For those too formal for nicknames, it was Dex or MacLean. Or nothing; he refused to acknowledge anyone unless they addressed him by his chosen name.
One of his teachers had once remarked that he had more pairs of sunglasses than Elton John, though he only had three of four pairs. Others claimed he had a pair for every occasion. When he was a freshman, a group of upper-class students had a running bet about what color his eyes were, but it was never resolved, as no one ever got to see him without them.
Down the hall and up the stairs, simply letting others slip around him in all directions. He didn’t need to be in near the same hurry as them. Because he carried all of his books and gear in his backpack since his sophomore year, he no longer needed to stop at his locker. Blissfully unaware that the days of backpacks in classrooms were drawing to a close.
It was in front of his old locker that he found his friend. Shades had no more use for it, had even forgotten the combination. Arthur LaRoch, on the other hand, had so much gear among his various extracurricular activities that he couldn’t even fit it all in one locker, even after he got burnt-out on football. Not to mention some ridiculously long runs between some of his classes and his own locker. In exchange for a few favors, Arthur got to have some extra storage space, along with a more strategic stop-over between classes.
“Yo! Arthur! You still with us tomorrow?”
“ ’Fraid not, Shades,” Arthur replied, digging out books for his next class. Tall and powerfully built, Shades’ friend towered nearly half a foot over him. Sitting atop the pile of texts was the cap that ordinarily covered his short blond hair outside of school, the hat he often insisted the student of the future would be able to wear in school without taking any crap from administration. And had so far out-debated every teacher he had ever engaged about the matter.
“Oh. Why not?” Arthur was originally invited out to the mountains with him and his friend John.
“Gotta fill in tomorrow,” Arthur told him. “No one else available. Maybe next time.”
“Bummer.”
Ever since they entered the wide world of employment, things seldom went according to plan. The two of them had been friends since they were in the fourth grade, and back then the only place they ever got to hang out was at school; Shades lived in Lakeside and Arthur lived just south of Kalispell, barely in the same school district. Now they had the money and the transportation, but seldom had the time to go anywhere or do anything.
“I’ve got to get going, Shades. Catch ya later.”
“Later.”
And he and Arthur parted in opposite directions.
On the way to his next class, Shades stopped at a fountain. Just listening to Nimrod for over twenty minutes made him feel parched. He would have preferred something other than water, but with some of his projects these days, he just didn’t have the money to squander on vending machines.
“Hey Shades!” someone shouted as he came up behind him at the fountain. Shades never caught his name, but remembered him from math class. “Ya better watch out, man! Carlos is really pissed! I think you shouldn’t’ve laughed at him.”
“Like it’s my fault he says stupid things. It’s not like I was the only one laughing.” Shades shrugged. This was nothing new; Carlos Adams had harbored his mysterious grudge against him ever since they were in the sixth grade. Though he had to admit that it had been a long time since Carlos had done anything, he had sometimes feared there might be one more round before graduation, and the clock was ticking down.
“Just thought I’d tell ya,” the guy said as he took off and Shades continued on his way.
Author's Notes:
Adams are composed mostly of empty space
From the moment Mr Doppler told them, You can forget about your books for now— we’re going to be doing something a little different before we move on to finals, Shades knew things were about to get more interesting. Then again, they always did whenever Flathead High’s answer to Mr Wizard decided to do something a little different. In the past year, between units, they had built and broken balsawood bridges, played around with electronics, made and launched tissue-paper balloons, and Doppler had even brought his own homemade hovercraft he constructed out of an inner-tube and a shopvac. Even his regular presentations sometimes scored a hit with the class. As Shades’ friend John sometimes said, Dude, when that guy blows shit up, he has way too much fun for a teacher!
They had spent most of the class grading each others’ last exams, and (just his luck) Shades ended up with Carlos’. For his part, Carlos had smirked at him and appeared to gloat over the exam he was checking, and Shades was left to wonder if the cocky bastard actually had his test, or was just messing with him. Though in this case, Shades quickly discovered that he would have the last laugh either way; for all the disapproving insinuations he made about Shades’ test, Carlos had barely passed his own. Not that this surprised him— Carlos fared better in math and shop classes, and anything involving computers or working with his hands, than he did with any other subjects. And always did better on Mr Doppler’s projects than on the regular exams.
Now the teacher was elaborating about this new direction.
“…We’re going to spend some time on the stranger side of science,” Mr Doppler told them as he wiped the board clean. “These older curriculum textbooks don’t have a single chapter about quantum physics, so you’re mainly going to be reading from these handouts and taking notes. This is probably going to take up most of the time we have left until Finals, and even then it’s really only going to be an overview, but I think it’s important to at least have a basic notion of it…”
Not that Shades was going to quit bringing his book with him; after all, outdated or not, it was too heavy to leave out of his training. Hoping that Doppler might get to the good stuff before Finals, Shades whipped out his pen and started taking notes. Every year, even as a senior, Mom still sent him with a couple pens when school started, but after two or three weeks of classes, it always inevitably degenerated into a free-for-all anyway, he was pretty sure half of his classmates were scribbling away with a different pen than they started with. And Shades never had to buy any more for the rest of the year, for he had mastered the game of Musical Pens before he was even in high school; while some people were good at losing pens, he was good at finding them.
“…Since everything in quantum theory begins at the subatomic level, we’ll spend the rest of the class on a review of the atom. There are some other particles we’ll discuss later, but for now we’ll start with the basics.” Mr Doppler wrote The Atom on the whiteboard. “This time I’ll pick on my Chem students from fourth period. Let’s see how much you remember from last semester. Josh, what are the component particles of the nucleus?”
“Neutrons and protons,” Josh answered from the second row.
“Right,” Doppler said, scribbling down his answers under the heading Nucleus. “And there is only one particle left, Carlos. What is it?”
“The electron,” Carlos Adams told him. Shades’ self-imposed arch-rival was perhaps an inch or so taller, with a deeply tanned complexion, shaggy black hair, and the most arrogant-looking natural expression Shades had ever seen, and sat in the very back row. It was his custom in most classes, as it was with most of the Back Row tribe, to only answer when called upon.
“Right again.” And Doppler added Carlos’ answer to his outline. He turned around to see Shades raising his hand. “Yes, Mr MacLean?”
“Aren’t atoms composed of empty space?” In the six years Shades had known him, he had never discovered the origin of Carlos’ animosity. Though Shades had originally done nothing to him, Carlos had insisted on antagonizing him over the years. Earlier, in math class, Carlos had been talking to one of his friends, and like everyone else in the room he had no idea what they were talking about, only that at some point Carlos blurted out “Raw power!” while waving one of his dirt-bike magazines. Of course, everyone in the class had been laughing their asses off, but naturally Carlos chose to single him out and had spent the remainder of the class flicking various writing utensils at him when he thought no one was looking. Six years of experience had taught him that things were going to get worse with or without his help, so he had decided that if Carlos was going to be an asshole in math class, their fragile ceasefire of the last year or so was likely at an end, and he knew better than to take his harassment sitting down.
Those who caught Shades’ pun tried to hide their grins as Carlos glared at him. And Shades simply answered his smoldering gaze with opaque lenses and an innocent smile.
“That’s a good point,” Doppler replied, and started drawing another diagram. “Just to refresh your memories, the neutron and proton are compacted into a tiny mass, and electrons orbit the nucleus at various energy levels, forming the electron shell. So what he said was true: atoms are composed mostly of empty space.”
This time, most of the class laughed for a second in spite of themselves.
Mr Doppler cocked his head at the class for a moment, trying to figure out what was so funny, finally deciding that he probably didn’t want to know as he resumed his discourse on atomic structure.
All the while, Carlos paid more attention to Shades than to the lecture. Wished he could remember exactly when Dexter had become the consummate smartass; it seemed even a couple years ago he was the one dishing out the witty remarks. But somewhere along the way, the tables had turned, and these days Dexter seemed to command an arsenal of snappy comebacks, burning him at every opportunity.
After all these years, now adding insult to injury, adding verbal jujitsu to his martial arts repertoire.
After being knocked on his ass a couple times in front of the entire class in the sixth grade, he decided it was time to get serious. At first he had tried a few books on martial arts, but he was unable to learn anything useful from them, and his attempt at a rematch was a total disaster. On the plus side, there had been no audience that time for his embarrassment.
Back in those days, Dexter even kicked his ass in his dreams.
When he started going to school in Kalispell, he looked up a Karate teacher, one Albert Fairbanks, as he recalled, who was said to be an awesome instructor. Only to find out, while watching one session, that he had been Dexter’s teacher since middle school, apparently that “Master Al” he had overheard him talking about. He had looked around, but most of the other schools he checked out mostly taught children or adults.
Carlos had first tried his hand at martial arts over two years ago. But the instructor often told him he seemed too angry, and when another student (who was also a classmate at school) told him of his grudge against Shades, the bastard expelled him. It took him months to find a new sensei (for by then he was at least learning to talk the talk) at a dojo where he didn’t share any school relations. Had had to lie and say he had no prior experience, that a friend had taught him a few moves and turned him on to martial arts. Never mind that his friend had been Dexter, who had shown him one too many moves in front of everyone else.
The most humiliating defeats of his life, and he had not forgotten; soon it would be payback time, and it would be his turn to thoroughly humiliate Dexter… in front of everybody.
While Carlos fumed, Shades mostly paid attention despite the fact that it was all déjà vu to him anymore; one thing he had noticed over the years was the increasing tendency of higher grade teachers to just keep telling him over and over things that he already knew. Still he could feel his nemesis shooting deathrays at the back of his head, nagging at his attention. Though he sat in the second-to-last row, he and Carlos were almost on opposite sides of the room.
Which suited Shades just fine for the simple reason that when Carlos decided to pull something, he always found it necessary to get inside his personal space to do it. Despite being more than happy to be out of there, he took a moment to let Carlos leave first when the bell rang.
His old friend Tom’s locker was just a couple doors down the hall. Though a junior to Shades’ senior, Tom Robinson had been friends with him almost as long as Shades had been friends with Arthur, longer even than Carlos had been enemies with Shades.
“Hey Shades! What’s up?”
“The ceiling.”
Shades watched Tom roll his eyes at his friend Vince’s favorite answer to that question. Just like John, Tom lived within a few miles of Shades’ house in Lakeside, but his two friends didn’t get along very well. Arthur, on the other hand, lived just south of Kalispell, and it wasn’t until they were in high school that they got to hang out much outside of school, whereas John and Tom were just a walk away.
Ignoring his friend’s look of total exasperation, Shades added, “We’re going exploring in John’s back yard tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
Shades had always found it amusing how Tom couldn’t stand good news about John. As much as it seemed to annoy either of them, he was as much Tom’s friend as he was John’s. What he found most amusing, though, was how well the two of them actually got along when they forgot they were supposed to hate each other.
“I just got a couple new games,” Tom continued, “and I thought we could try ’em out. Maybe bring over some of your cheat codes or something.”
“I’d love to, but I work late tonight.” In spirit, though, he was already in Tom’s living room, controller in hand. He thought for a moment, then said, “Could I come over Sunday?”
“Cool. We’ll have pizza. How does that sound?”
“Like a plan.” Fortunately, he was about to put the finishing touches on Mrs Eastman’s paper, so he otherwise had no homework this weekend. “And don’t worry— if John and I find anything, we’ll cut ya in on it.”
John’s family’s “back yard” was a good many acres near Blacktail Mountain, and somewhere in the midst of all that forest was said to be a sealed, abandoned gold mine. They still hadn’t found it after several years of wandering, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Even Shades himself would have to admit that the gold mine was really just an excuse to explore, but he still had a running pact among his friends, just in case they ever did find anything interesting.
He and Tom talked for another minute, then it was off to their last class for the day.
Shades’ final class was a study hall, and he had used his arrangements— as he had these past four years— to go to Mr Marten’s computer lab. It only took twenty minutes or so to wrap up his paper, and now he and John were discussing their plans for tomorrow’s adventure. One of the perks of being in any of Mr Marten’s classes was that he didn’t care if his students talked, worked on other classes, or even played computer games— as long as they completed his assignments on time.
“So Arthur isn’t coming with us?” John asked, not even taking his eye off his spreadsheet. He had been doing this all year, and it was now second nature to him.
“Yeah, he had to fill in at work.” Shades had managed to get the station next to John’s. Mr Marten’s lab was a hybrid of three different waves of upgrades, and his computer was a Frankenstein chimera of older parts, but it still worked for his purposes. That paper had used up the last of his disk space, so he would have to bring another disk next week. In the meantime, a little Solitaire was in order.
“Guess that’s one less lunch to pack.” Yet that news didn’t seem to diminish his enthusiasm. One thing about John Doe that Shades could always count on was his friend’s hyper personality, and the most animated face he had ever seen to go with it. Only a flicker of regret, then, “So why aren’t you writing? Don’t tell me you’re stuck again.”
“No, I just need another disk.”
“You can borrow one of mine,” John offered, and Shades simply waved his hand.
“Thanks, but I don’t have enough time left to do anything now anyway.” Shades stayed on top of things (and secretly hoped his teachers weren’t pulling his leg about this stuff being useful in real life), even finding time to pursue his own private projects. After his “Bermuda Triangle” paper years ago, he had started compiling accounts of paranormal events, but after a time he got bored and started writing a few accounts of his own. He had worked on them off and on over the years, and in light of her remarks in class, he now couldn’t help wondering offhand what Amy would think of them. “Anyhoo, it’s too bad Arthur couldn’t come along. After all, he doesn’t get out there all the time like we can…”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” John’s typing slowed down noticeably. “You never get tired of wandering in the woods, do you?”
“Nope.” Shades folded his arms behind his back and stared even deeper into space than John was. “You would’ve loved it…”
“Loved what, dude?”
“You didn’t move here until we were in the seventh grade,” Shades told him. “It was different when I was a kid. It all felt so… new, but also really old… I don’t know how to describe it, but this time of year kinda makes me feel like that again.”
There was a sense of mystery out there that he couldn’t quite explain. That even year after year of outside encroachment still hadn’t fully erased. There were things out there whose stories had never been told, places that had an aura all their own. Explored and mapped, yet still full of well-hidden secrets.
John sat there in uncharacteristic silence while Shades reminisced.
“When I was in the third grade, I used to walk to and from school.” Of course, back then he had gone to school in Lakeside, and could therefore do that. “There weren’t as many people around back then, so there were trails and shortcuts I couldn’t show you anymore. I wish you guys could’ve been there…”
“Yeah.” John knew that Shades sometimes got like that, but he just didn’t have the heart to stop him. When his friend got going like this, he could almost see it. Then he came back down to Earth, asking, “You’re still gonna hang out with us at Sandy’s Sunday night, right?”
“Not this time,” Shades replied.
“Why not?”
Sandy lived just a couple blocks’ distance from Shades’ house. Over a year ago, Sandy started a band called Nowheresville— which Vince (keyboard) took every opportunity to point out, Dave Barry would’ve said was a good name for a rock band— and John played drums. They originally called themselves America’s Most Wanted (an inside joke on John Doe’s name), but decided that Nowheresville worked better.
On Sunday nights, Nowheresville could be heard for blocks around, at least according to the neighbors.
“Tom’s got a couple new games, and I want to check ’em out,” Shades explained.
“Oh. Good for him.”
“Come on… I’ll be there next week.” Shades often hung out with them when they rehearsed on Sunday nights, while Sandy’s mom was off at church, and politely (sometimes not so politely) answered the phone for the various people who called to complain about them during their sessions. For having played together for little more than a year, he didn’t think they sounded half bad. “After all, without me, who would hold off all of your adoring fans?”
“More like major critics,” John muttered. “Wouldn’t know good speed-punk if it bit them in the ass…”
“Yeah, but if no one stood in your way, it would be all too easy. Anyhoo, let’s talk about tomorrow.” He had been too busy lately to get very far, but he looked forward to getting out into the deeper woods again. He could already imagine what the forest must look like now that the snow had melted off and everything was green again. “You think anyone’s done anything with that old fort?”
“Probably not,” John replied after pondering for a moment, then, remembering the small mountain stream that ran next to their house, said, “If you think about it, we’ve got the closest bridge. It’s a long way around.”
“I guess you’re right. Maybe we should fix it up and camp out there this summer. That first level’s big enough to put up a tent.”
“Yeah, dude, we probably could.” John and Shades had discovered it a few years ago on one of their hikes, and he was still impressed. “Though we’ll have to see how much that pulley can handle… I wonder who built that thing anyway.”
So did Shades. He especially had seen many things while wandering in the woods, including a number of little forts built by successive generations of kids. Then abandoned, then taken up and added on to by others. Yet this particular one, a tree-fort, was one of the most impressive specimens he had ever seen.
In the most far-flung corner of John’s family’s land was a mighty pine that stood head and shoulders above the surrounding trees. And set high in its branches were three platforms, from the highest of which one could see for a long way. There was a rickety set of rungs nailed into the trunk, but a couple years ago they had replaced it with a rope ladder. The main platform was large enough to walk around on, and underneath the second platform was hung a pulley for hauling things up. The other two platforms had ladders between them, where they had found a battered canteen, a wind-swept pile of ruined magazines, and the tattered remains of an American flag.
“Whoever they were,” Shades remarked, “they really knew what they were doing.”
“You can say that again! Dude, we should make a campfire near there and have a barbecue and—”
The rest of John’s great idea was drowned out by the bell.
“Come on, John. You can tell me all about it tomorrow. I already know Arthur’s down for it, and I bet Sandy and the others would be interested too.”
“Dude!”
Shades would usually have followed him back to his locker, but today he was in a bit of a hurry. Bypassing everyone else, he made it out into the parking lot ahead of the crowd. A good head start, given everything he needed to do between now and tomorrow.
He added possible wardrobe and equipment changes for tomorrow’s excursion to his mental notes as he looked up at the sky. This morning had greeted him with a blameless blue sky, and a forecast of more of the same tomorrow. At some point between US Government and study hall, though, dark clouds had settled in, giving him the sinking feeling it was going to rain within the hour.
Could already smell it.
Not only did Shades have the advantage of not having to stop at a locker on his way out, he also had a secret weapon for escaping crowded parking lots. Even as he made his way, he removed a black helmet dangling from the side of his backpack. He loved the feel of the wind in his hair, but he wore a helmet most of the time anyway; though very confident in his own riding skills, some other drivers’ exploits did not inspire his confidence. Fished his keys out of his pocket and threw his pack over his shoulders.
A sixteenth birthday present of sorts, Master Al had hooked him up with a really good price on it. Even if he had had to work over a year to pay it off. Even so, he took good care of that black motorcycle, for only its awesome gas mileage offered him any personal freedom without being at the mercy of others, given what great distances he had to traverse every day.
He threw on his helmet and gloves, mounted his motorcycle, and wove his way through the other early departures with ease.
Author's Notes:
smooshed cheeseburger
The best thing about being the first out the door, Shades believed, was that you didn’t have to stand in line behind half the school while ordering dinner.
He could get an early start, take his time, and still get things done. Having beaten the after-school rush, he quickly reached the front of the line at Tim’s Grill, his favorite burger joint. It had been there for as long as he could remember, having outlasted other food court fixtures come and gone over the years. Tim’s Grill was one of a dozen reasons why he liked the old mall better than the new one.
He had decided to go take-out, as someone else had managed to get here even ahead of him. Near the middle of the food court, Shades spotted Carlos and a couple of his friends as he waited for his food. His best guess was that their class must have ended early for some reason or another.
Fortunately, neither Carlos nor his companions had noticed him, so he still had a chance of leaving without incident. This still bothered him, though, since he couldn’t recall ever seeing Carlos here after school. When his order arrived, he just shrugged, wondering offhand why stooges always seemed to come in threes.
Right before he turned to leave, he overheard Carlos declare that he could down an entire hamburger in less than ten seconds. Then he watched him open his mouth a couple inches farther than he would previously have thought possible and chomp almost half of the sandwich in one bite. Shades could barely keep a straight face as he watched him wolf down the rest of it. And in less than ten seconds.
In his own way, Shades was impressed. He had never seen him do that before.
Seeing that Carlos wasn’t about to do anything else that would win him ten grand if he only had video camera, Shades decided to go find someplace less annoying to eat. Down the way, he found a quiet, little-used bench and sat down to eat. In addition to grabbing some of the best burgers in town, he also had a couple errands to run here before work, making for a very convenient dinner arrangement.
He was still munching fries and contemplating his plans when a bronzed hand panted itself on his cheeseburger.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Dexter.”
A voice so ear-grating in its familiarity after all these years. Though he didn’t need to anymore, Shades looked up to see Carlos leaning over him, hand resting on top of the burger resting on the bench’s broad armrest. He was not surprised to see Carlos’ two friends flanked behind him.
“Hands off, Carlos…” On the surface, Shades appeared rather casual for such an unexpected confrontation, but underneath it all, he had had enough. “I don’t know where you’ve been.”
Carlos kept his hand firmly planted on the burger.
“I said…” With a swift motion, Shades pounded his fist on Carlos’ hand before he could retract it. “Hands off!”
“Gah—” Carlos sputtered, wincing at the ketchup now splattered on his brand new shirt.
“What do you want, Atom-Boy?” Ignoring the ketchup on his own jacket for now, Shades focused a moment on his poor cheeseburger, seeing, fortunately, that it wasn’t ruined. Squashed yet edible. “I don’t want to know if you can eat that in less than ten seconds.”
“That’s Atom-Man to you, Dexter!”
His friends couldn’t help laughing, undermining Carlos.
“Mr Doppler,” Carlos started, in a high, squeaky voice neither Shades nor Carlos’ companions could keep a straight face at, “Aren’t atoms composed mostly of empty space? Do you think you’re funny, Dexter?”
“Not as funny as you. And don’t call me Dexter.” Shades tried not to blow up on people, but after six years he had precious little patience for Carlos and his stunts anymore. He simply asked him, point-blank, “What’s your problem, man?”
“You,” Carlos told him, leaning forward until he was right in Shades’ face. Until he could smell mustard and pickles, and it nearly made him gag. “My beef with you—”
“Bad pun.”
And again Carlos’ friends laughed in spite of themselves.
“Dammit! Ever since I first met you, you’ve been a pain in the ass.”
Shades thought of reminding him that the first time they met, in gym class, Carlos had thought it amusing to keep spiking volleyballs at him when he though he wasn’t paying attention and saying over and over that it was an accident, to ask who was a pain in whose ass, but simply let him continue.
“I challenged you once before” (more than that, but only once formally) “and now I’m challenging you again.”
Carlos stepped back, which was probably a good thing; if Shades had had to smell Carlos’ breath any longer, he might have seriously considered violating one of his most serious principles:
“Don’t look at me,” Shades replied. “I never throw the first punch.”
“You won’t have to,” Carlos answered darkly. “I’m gonna be throwin’ all the punches this time. You’ve humiliated me for the last time. I’m challenging you. I’ll see you—”
“You’re seriously serious about this, aren’t you?”
“Damn right.”
“That’s damn straight.” Shades was now certain their unspoken truce was crumbling by the minute. “And, well, I respectfully decline.”
Carlos stared at him, visibly surprised. “Why?”
Can he do that? one of his friend’s faces seemed to ask, the other’s seemed to say, I think he just did.
“I’ve got nothing to prove,” Shades replied, taking a bite out of his smooshed burger, chewing it slowly, swallowing before he finished. “It’s your beef, not mine.”
Carlos glowered at him for a long moment before he finally spoke.
“Fine, if you want to play it that way. Come on, guys. We don’t need to talk to this loser.” He turned and looked Shades right in the eye before he walked away, saying, “This isn’t over yet, Dexter.”
“It damn well better be.” Shades watched them as they walked away. As Master Al always told him: A smart warrior walks away from a pointless fight. A wise warrior looks over his shoulder while doing so. He trusted Carlos about as far as he could throw him, and he didn’t wish to find out the hard way exactly how far that was. “And don’t call me Dexter.”
Once he was certain Carlos wasn’t going to pull anything else, that he would actually be able to eat in peace, Shades used some napkins to wipe the ketchup off his jacket, then decided to finish eating while his food was still warm.
As always, Carlos only half made sense to him. There was some piece of the puzzle that had been missing all these years. Something that might put his attitude in perspective. He was willing to listen, but assholes like Carlos were seldom willing to talk.
Shades tried to shrug it off, but as his day unfolded, he had had an increasingly strange feeling. At first, he thought he was just excited about tomorrow’s hike, but now he wondered. As he took another sip of his drink, he decided to keep an eye out.
Just in case Carlos wasn’t finished with him yet.
A short while later, Shades walked out of a sporting goods store with a new retainer strap for his sunglasses, as his current one’s rubber grips had started to turn brittle during the winter and he no longer trusted it.
He glanced across the corridor at the arcade, fondly remembering the small fortune in quarters he had blown over the years. As he looked among the video revelers, though, his fond memories were crowded aside by the sight of Carlos and Company at the air-hockey table. Seeing that they hadn’t seen him, he again decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
At least he was fairly sure they hadn’t seen him. He really didn’t think Carlos was up to that kind of thing. Still, he had to admit the bastard did have a knack for showing up when he was least expected. And least convenient.
And to this day, he still didn’t know what it was even about. Though Carlos had caused trouble for him off and on over the years, he had never figured out the source of the guy’s enmity. Though, since the beginning of their senior year, Carlos had mostly put on the attitude of having “better things to do” than harass him.
Not that Shades was complaining.
Now that he thought about it, a while back, he had heard a rumor that Carlos had been dabbling in martial arts these days. In light of his earlier confrontation, it offered little hope that his old friend had grown up or decided to get a life. Now he wondered if Carlos wasn’t planning to do something spectacularly stupid, like starting a brawl at the graduation ceremony next month. He had done things like that before, so if Carlos had any bright ideas, he would have to be on his—
“Hi, Dexter.”
Shades jumped in complete surprise, pivoting on his feet and trying to figure out how Carlos had gotten from the arcade to right behind him so quickly, realized just a hair before he turned that that voice wasn’t even Carlos’.
Amy O’Connor jumped, too, taken aback by Shades’ unexpected reaction. There was an awkward silence before Shades rediscovered his words.
Then it happened again. The moment he saw her, Shades felt his mind retreat several miles back in his skull to a place so far away. It was as if he was watching her in a dream. It still struck him as odd that he should feel like this whenever he met her out of the blue. What he felt was perhaps the only way he knew to react to her presence. As he had since he was in middle school, back before they carted the boys and the girls off to different rooms and unveiled the mysteries of adult life in far more detail than he had wanted to know when he was only eleven.
Since middle school… Has it really been that long?…
Now he stood before her, feeling those eternal seconds slipping away before it happened again. As it had since he was in the sixth grade, come to think of it, and she was still the pop-quiz he was never prepared for. In the intervening years, he had had only a handful of opportunities to talk to her face to face, and always before he would lose his nerve. Always he would let himself get sidetracked by someone or something. Or, if they did talk, he always let it drift into meaningless social ritual.
“Oh, hi, Amy…” Shades finally managed, deciding that he couldn’t afford his own silence any longer. Somehow, after all these years, he had never even had a real conversation with her, let alone dared to ask her out on a date. He would understand if she brushed him aside, as he had seen her do to other guys, dodging them as casually as if they were standing still, but their days as students together were numbered; if he was going to find out if they had anything in common, it would have to be right here, right now.
“You okay?” Amy asked. “You look a little… surprised.”
To her, Shades genuinely looked as if he was expecting an attack or something. With Shelly off to a dental appointment, and none of her other friends around, she realized that this was the first time she could remember walking around the mall alone in ages. But that was just fine because she had caught Dexter by himself, as well. Aside from his crew— Arthur, Tom, and John and the band— she knew he was something of a loner. As far as she could tell, he was quite talkative in the company of his friends and associates, but otherwise was often quiet, even aloof. She had seen him in company he didn’t like— remembered him dealing with people who refused to call him “Shades” back when he first chose that name— how he could ignore you so completely as to almost make you question your own existence. As if anyone who over-stayed their welcome was just a figment of his imagination. But she had also seen his kindness, often to total strangers, and knew that he was really just a spook (but a sweet spook), a mostly harmless one.
Yet she was still taken aback by how startled and wary he had been only seconds ago.
“Just lost in thought,” Shades replied. Carlos was his problem; he wasn’t going to dump it in her lap. She had taken him completely off-guard, but in a pleasant sort of way. Found he wished she was stalking him instead of Carlos. “So, what’s up?”
“Not much.” The usual “hanging out” dialogue, which she had never really liked. Hers was a quiet affinity for intelligent, meaningful conversation, though Shelly was the only person she knew who offered any opportunity for it. This wasn’t as interesting as she had hoped, but she decided to give him one more chance to take the initiative. “So what’s up with you?”
“More of the same,” Shades said, wishing he could think of what to say next. Determined to communicate— this was not going degenerate into a conversation about the weather. Thinking fast, he asked her, “So, are you really interested in paranormal stuff, or were you just tryin’ to bug the hell out of old Nimrod?”
“A little of both, I guess,” she told him, looking at her reflection in those opaque lenses staring back at her. Yet at least his half of the conversation was becoming less opaque. “I’m not very familiar with most of that stuff, but I do think there are things in this world science has yet to explain. And I’ve heard you like to write about stuff like that.”
“Yeah.” It looked like he was going to get to hear more of what she had to say after all. “But I really do more reading than writing about it. I get a lot of my ideas when I’m out in the woods… I’m not boring you, am I?”
“No. But I’m surprised you didn’t say something earlier.” Before, Amy had originally felt somehow provoked by Shades’ silence to speak about the subject. Now she could see that she had finally broken the ice. Since none of their classmates were around to hear this, there was something she had wanted to know for a long time… “Tell me,” she asked, before he could say anything else, “why do you always do this?”
Then she gave him the V.
“Well…” Now that she asked, Shades didn’t really know. He had been giving her the “victory” V for so many years, and it had seemed so obvious, so natural, when he was doing it. “Well… it just seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
Another awkward pause.
Into which Amy finally interjected, “So, what are you doing this weekend?”
Right after which, she wondered why she had asked him that. The only answer she could come up with was that it just seemed like the thing to do at the time. As obvious as it apparently was for Shades to salute her.
“Well, I’m going hiking with John tomorrow,” Shades told her, before her words sank in fully, and he immediately regretted it.
“Oh.” Disappointment and relief struggling in equal measure as she tried figure out when this conversation had detoured.
“But I’m free Saturday night,” Shades quickly tacked on, though he knew it was going to be a logistical challenge. He never got to talk to Amy like this, and he was certain she wasn’t just messing with him, as a few other girls had before, just trying to psych him. “What did you have in mind, Amy?”
“I don’t know…” Now she found herself in the same boat she had placed him in only moments ago. But at least she wasn’t alone. Disappointment had gained the upper hand right before he spoke, and now it was relief. Only now it was relief at being rewarded for her strange gamble. “Maybe a movie…”
Shades turned aside in mid stride, swooping past a rack of free publications, passing a newspaper whose headline read Black Van Strikes Again!, grabbing one of those Community Events-type sheets.
“Let’s see what’s playing…” they both said in almost perfect unison as he flipped to the cinema page.
As they took turns scanning the listing, Amy realized that any lingering doubts about this turn of events were quickly fading. Though otherwise a loner, Shades seemed to have lots of fun when he was with his friends. She had wanted to join them on several occasions, but the situation never seemed to be quite right. Much as she had pondered asking him about the “V” on several occasions, but it somehow made sense in a way that apparently neither of them understood. It seemed perfectly natural to return his salute with a helpless grin; she just didn’t have the heart to pretend not to know him. That, and she was half afraid that if she ever returned his gesture, he might be too embarrassed to do it again.
And for some reason, she knew she would miss it.
Then again, this had been a year for exploring the mysteries in her life. Ever since she was sick over Christmas break, things just hadn’t been the same. All semester, she had felt lost and adrift in the world she had spent the last few years of her life building around herself.
Much earlier than most of her peers, she had begun to notice that there were things beyond the shallow trappings and empty rituals of high school; she suspected these somethings might actually be life. The events of recent months had revealed to her just how shallow most aspects of her life had become. How much of a prisoner she was becoming to her own “success” in the Game. How, over the years, she had given in to society’s flatteries (she didn’t like to think herself conceited, but she couldn’t help noticing how increasingly people noticed her as she got older, how it had crept up on her) and insidiously gone along with the bandwagon.
Found she was ashamed at the realization that all of the reasons she could think of for not hanging out with Shades weren’t even her own. She was glad Shades had accepted her offer; she had felt an increasing need to get out of her life, and she was now certain he could help her. Though the same handful of people remained at his side at the core, people passed in and out of their circle of friends with uncommon ease. Just as her old friends used to before they all started playing the Clique Game.
All the while they both browsed the listings, hitting almost simultaneously on a movie called The Crossfire Gang.
“That one!” they blurted, this time in perfect unison.
The listing read Action Comedy of the Year! and Shades wondered why Amy would pick it— at least until he looked at the cast. For her part, this wasn’t really about the movie, but at least he had picked something without too much plot to keep track of when she wanted to talk to him.
Shades still couldn’t quite believe he was doing this. Resisting the urge to pinch himself, he asked her, “So, your ride or mine?”
“Yours.” It might be her only chance to ride on the back of a motorcycle with someone who wouldn’t do anything too stupid while trying to impress her.
“Okay.” Trying not to be self-conscious that he could see how much she liked the idea.
“What do you want to do now?” Making no secret of how pleased she was to already be able to read that much in spite of his shades. Of course, tomorrow night she had every intention of taking those things off and finding out what color his eyes really were. In fact, she had a strong intuition that not only would he not mind, but was perhaps looking forward to it himself. They had been in all of the same schools since at least the third grade, and somehow she knew she should remember, it bothered her that she didn’t.
“Hmm… I’ve got to go to work soon…” Yet he didn’t want to end such an interesting and pleasantly surprising meeting on such an abrupt note. “But I don’t have to go for a little while.”
One of the perks of being ahead of schedule.
“Then why don’t we pick up where Nimrod left off?”
Though the topic didn’t linger long on the paranormal, instead turning to local fort-building history, the surrounding trails, the mountains in general. Shades kept looking at his watch, hoping that she didn’t think he was bored when he was really just worried about being late and wishing he had more time. And Amy tried not to laugh when she saw the flicker of nervousness his shades just couldn’t hide whenever he looked at his watch. Finding out for themselves how often the two of them had been to many of the same places in the mountains west of Lakeside.
How many times they could potentially have crossed paths.
End Notes:
“The Crossfire Gang” is the title of a short-lived series of stories this one wrote in high school— and not a particularly good one, at that— and the reference is an inside joke.
Author's Notes:
Carlos crosses the line
Some fifteen minutes later, Shades stepped outside, having parted with Amy as she went to grab her own dinner.
The half hour or so he had been inside, the clouds had gone even darker. He seriously doubted he could get to work before it started raining now. Not that he was terribly concerned about it at the moment.
Even though it looked like he was going to need boots and a raincoat for tomorrow’s expedition, he found he was more preoccupied with tomorrow night. Now that he thought about it, it dawned on him that he had spent so long trying to find the right time and place (not to mention the nerve) to talk to Amy, he had never really given much thought to what he wanted to talk about. Much like all those times he had saluted her, he was strangely certain that the answer would just come to him naturally.
As he would have to be back from their hike in time to pick up Amy in time to make it to the show in time, his mind kept circling itself about whether or not to tell John. He knew he and his friends weren’t into secrets— if he did go out with her, he would have to tell them sooner or later— yet that idea was the most daunting of all. All of his friends would be happy for him— he was sure of that— but he couldn’t help having mixed feelings about their congratulations. For some reason, positive feedback about these things always felt like razzing; even after eighteen-plus years of being one of them, it was something he never quite understood about the male tribe.
As enigmatic to him as a lot of things about the female tribe, he thought as he wondered for a moment why she called him Dexter. Aside from his mom (and occasionally that bastard Carlos), it was a name no one used anymore. Yet at least when Amy called him Dexter, it just didn’t have that mocking quality he always heard in other people’s voices. Whether it was there or not. It wasn’t until he was almost out of middle school that he had learned to take a compliment, instead of picking it apart, digging to find the unspoken insult that must surely be hidden between the lines. It was only after his talents and abilities became an asset, rather than a liability, that he had finally learned to lighten up and take encouragement at face value.
Though he had always felt slightly embarrassed by the handful of compliments he had received from her, he had never sensed any meanness in them. Not even that time, in the eighth grade, when his mom had let her dogs out for the morning, noticing only once it was too late— after they had bolted back inside— that they had had a close encounter of the third kind. With a skunk. The whole house reeked of it for a month, and so had he.
The only upside he found was that everyone let him have whatever seat he wanted, both on the bus and in class. As if they should complain: at least they didn’t have to live with him twenty-four/seven. Carlos had even written him an appropriately-themed ode (Roses are red/ violets are blue/ skunks smell like shit/ and so do you!) in a couple stalls in the boys room.
Aside from his friends, whose jokes at least were good-natured, Amy was the one person who was never rude to him through it all. And he could think of other incidents when, in the face of the crowd’s mindless mentality, she just couldn’t get with the program.
Such was Shades’ line of thought when he reached his motorcycle. So lost he was in his remembrances, he had even forgotten to put his helmet on. What finally brought him back to the here and now was noticing that the motor was ignoring his effort to start it. Wasn’t even trying. When nothing happened a second time, he instinctively knew something was very wrong.
“Going somewhere, Dexter?” an all too familiar voice intoned.
Before he even turned around, “Carlos—”
“Think ya took long enough?” Carlos demanded. After all, he and his friends had stood behind that truck for over ten minutes while Shades was talking to Amy. He had been told that Shades often ate at the mall after school, and that bit of intelligence had proven useful. Even beat him to his parking spot. “Jesus, Dexter, what were you and your new girlfriend doin—”
“Don’t call me Dexter,” Shades cut him off. He could see Carlos was trying to bait him, but the fool didn’t seem to realize that there was no need for it. Not after all these years. He was already in combat mode, and the sparkplug Carlos tossed up and down in his hand was all that he heeded. “Give it back. I’m only going to ask once.”
“No,” Carlos told him. “You’re going to listen to me. You’re not going anywhere until—”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Right before Carlos could catch the sparkplug one last time, Shades snapped his foot out and kicked his hand, causing him to fumble it. Then caught Carlos with his other foot, knocking him back so he could reach down and snatch it up before anyone else could take it from him. Shades stuffed it in his pocket before anyone else made a move.
“That does it!” Carlos thundered as he charged Shades.
Who sidestepped and tripped him, sending him stumbling against the side of a truck.
On impulse, both of Carlos’ friends got into the act, and Shades was forced to move fast. He blocked one guy’s punch with his helmet, sending him stumbling back clutching his fist, cursing. The other guy, though, scored a glancing blow to the chest, nearly making Shades trip over his own bike. At the last second, though, Shades caught himself, bracing one foot against the car behind him.
That was when Carlos jumped back into the fray. Shades blocked his other opponent’s attack, grabbing his arm while he was off-balance, and dragging him right in the way of Carlos’ vicious kick. Instead of Shades, Carlos got his friend, right in the nuts.
“You son of a bitch…” Carlos muttered as his partners staggered away, apparently having already had enough. He strode slowly toward his nemesis, determination written all over his face. As had happened several times before, the situation had spiraled out of his control once Shades made his move. This time he would make things end differently.
Shades managed to block the first kick, but Carlos connected with the second, pressing him back.
A small crowd was beginning to form around them, as often did around public brawls. To those gathered around this conflict, the cause was irrelevant: the mere fact that Carlos had tried to gang up on Shades automatically made him the “bad guy” in their eyes. And Shades knew it would not be long before someone called the cops.
Time to end this. Police aside, Shades’ couldn’t afford to get injured— he had work to do. And knowing that things would go downhill fast if Carlos got the upper hand, he refocused.
Carlos, savoring the sense of power he had gained from defying the script he raged against from the first time he fought Shades, swung again.
Instead of blocking, Shades shifted his center. Not only one of the most devastating fighting techniques Master Al had taught him, but also his arch-enemy’s seemingly incurable tactical weakness. He caught Carlos’ arm and, with a simple twist of the wrist, sent him head-over-heels, skidding across the pavement on his ass.
It took Carlos a moment to regain his feet. Seeing that his friends had already split, he staggered away, shouting, “This isn’t over, Dexter! I’ll get you later!”
“And I’ll be waiting!” Shades called after him before he turned back to his bike. “And don’t call me Dexter!”
The show was over, and those who had stopped to watch this spectacle were already beginning to disperse; if they lost interest, there might be no police to deal with after all.
“Ow…” Shades muttered, rubbing his side where Carlos had kicked him. Wanting to get the hell out of here before anyone talked to the cops, he pulled the sparkplug out of his pocket and started to work. “I don’t have time for this shit…”
Though he knew he got off easy that time; if Carlos’ friends had stayed in it, he wasn’t entirely sure he could have held out against all three of them for very long. Still, he didn’t like the way Carlos had broken through his guard so easily like that. A couple minutes later, he was out of the parking lot, albeit over twenty minutes later than he meant to be.
He had encountered two delays. One he had enjoyed, one he hadn’t. Now he would have to hurry if he was going to get to the Army Surplus Store before his shift.
Given that no police cars had shown up yet, he was fairly confident no one had called them. Though he could be wrong, he doubted anyone would press charges. Unless there was someone in the crowd who liked to mind other people’s business, he had no interest in screwing up his own record, and he was quite sure Carlos would be too embarrassed about getting his ass handed to him to make a statement.
Experience told him that he hadn’t seen the last of him. Ever since Carlos first tried to pick on him in the sixth grade, a pattern had formed. Carlos went too far, and Shades ended up asserting himself, and so it came to blows. That the first time had been in front of half the school, and thanks to training with Master Al for over a year before that, resulted in humiliating defeats for Carlos.
He wasn’t the only one Carlos had harassed— or gotten clobbered by— over the years, but somehow Shades had become the target of all his rage. Master Al had told him once that some people were just never meant to get along, but Carlos was a recurring figure. They had locked horns several times over the years, a couple years ago Carlos had even challenged him to a martial arts tournament, and even the rest of the time he was still antagonistic, but what he had noticed was that when Carlos actually fought with him was during semesters when they were stuck in some of the same classes together.
And it seemed that in the meantime Carlos had learned some new moves. Since last summer, Carlos’ “better things to do” had apparently involved some real martial arts training— if Carlos hadn’t gotten too carried away and given him that opening, things could have gotten really ugly. Since he earned his black belt about a year ago, Master Al had been having him spar against an increasingly tougher procession of his more advanced second and third dan students, so he could tell Carlos had improved his own skills noticeably. Shades tried to look on the bright side, that maybe having an arch-rival would keep him from slacking off too much in his own training, but somehow it just wasn’t funny. His thoughts kept revolving back around to the intuition that his next run-in with Carlos might be genuinely dangerous.
He figured Master Al had probably had to deal with this kind of crap somewhere along the way, and he made a mental note to talk to him about it later. Hopefully before Carlos got too far out of hand.
Author's Notes:
a joke to behold
Shades stood in full uniform, a joke to behold.
A total contradiction of his style, as well as most of what he stood for. White shirt. Black slacks. And that dorky-looking vest with the name tag. (The words Shades inscribed on it being the only lingering trace of his persona.) He had been forced to get a job at DepartMart ever since Master Al was forced to sell his shop as the never-ending influx of wealth from California turned both tax code and real estate rates against him. So he had had about half a year to contemplate why bosses in major chains were so determined to make their subordinates look retarded next to them.
Just sellin’ out to The Man.
Though he had to admit that he had borrowed most of his theories on boss psychology from Vince, who had spent over a year at Happy Burger perfecting his ideas in the first place.
The first thing he did after taking off his helmet was don a pair of “prescription” glasses before he walked in the door. He needed a source of income, had a choice between this and fast food, and these days he sometimes wondered why the only choices he could find were between bad and worse. The one thing he had learned that he could bring to future jobs was the knowledge that he wasn’t cut out for customer service. Those darkened lenses were sometimes the only thing standing between various customers and supervisors and his true feelings; his eyes often betrayed too much.
Shades had barely made it into the parking lot before it started raining, and by the time he got inside it was coming down steady. Thanks to Carlos’ little stunt, he had barely had enough time to talk to Gus at the Army Surplus Store for all of five minutes. Gus was an amicable enough fellow, an old associate of his father’s and a veteran of several campaigns in Southeast Asia, who was quite knowledgeable about unconventional fighting tactics. Just sitting downstairs with his wagon-circle of counters laden with martial arts weapons. He barely had enough time to take care of business before he had to breeze back out the door.
On the way out, he was cut off by a black van with deeply (probably illegally) tinted windows, and a brief glimpse of vanity plates reading POWRSRJ. It was a phrase he had heard somewhere, and it had given him a weird feeling, but he had been in a hurry, had a lot on his mind. He cast his mind back to the whip now resting among the items in his backpack. If Carlos wanted to up the odds, so could he.
Ever since his eighteenth birthday, he had enjoyed using his martial arts certification from Master Al to buy fun new weapons. Since he had first started training, he had aimed to expand his proficiency with various weapons, mostly for the hell of it. Off and on since childhood, he had felt an inexplicable need to know these things, as if they might somehow be as vital to his future as everything he had gleaned from hitting the books all these years. And although not terribly practical in combat, he had been watching a lot of old adventure movies with Sandy’s friends lately, and a whip looked like a fun weapon, just to fool around with.
On the job, Shades had mastered two specific skills. One: he had learned the particulars of the store better than most of his fellow employees, so it didn’t matter whether or not it was “his” department. And two: he had continued to cultivate the art of stealth whenever his “asshole sense” (as he thought of it) started tingling; he had gotten pretty good at seeing rude customers from a mile away. He knew it was his job, but also believed it was his sacred duty to keep his fellow employees— especially those who had worked here longer than himself— on their toes.
Becky Chandler was the bassist in Sandy’s band, and a friend of hers who claimed to practice magick (and who adamantly insisted that it was spelled with a K) once offered to ensorcel his vest to deflect people’s attention and make him less noticeable. Anymore, he was seriously thinking about taking her up on it. After all, the worst that could happen was that it wouldn’t work.
In the meantime, Shades ducked whenever a particularly determined-looking customer came through. He knew it would take longer to finish stocking CDs, still he also knew he wouldn’t lose nearly as much time as he would to some people’s parade of questions to which he had no satisfactory answers. Where is the…? (always some obscure item he didn’t know DepartMart even carried in spite of his time here), or You’re all out of… (something he had no control over), Would you order more? (hell no— the computer in the back handled all the shipping, and Shades doubted it was even programmed to take orders from its own creators), or his personal favorite, Where are the restrooms? (as they had to walk right past the damn things on the way in). And always weird questions he could never have the right answer to.
Again he reminded himself that he only needed to hold out for about two more months, then he could find a new job. Just until after he and Arthur had made their long-planned road trip to Alaska this summer. Gary LaRoch had done some lucrative business deals up there and made a small fortune, perhaps his luck would rub off on them.
And again, he wished he was still working for Master Al. Granted, this job paid about a dollar-an-hour more than Al’s under-the-table wages, but there were seldom rude customers. Even after he had finished paying off his motorcycle, he kept a good chunk of change. Of course, Al had practically given it to him for a song, being a sixteenth birthday present and all, Shades had spent that summer at his first real job paying it off. It was certainly more than his mom could have afforded.
Then again, ever since Sergeant Douglas MacLean disappeared in action, during an operation whose exact nature no one could even account for, in the Amazon Jungle nearly eight years ago, there had come to be lots of things Mom couldn’t afford. Despite moving up in the world after it left her to fend for herself, the Great California Invasion marched on, and over the years, the price of everything kept climbing as outside incomes outpaced the more modest local standards. Many times she had spoken of leaving the increasingly expensive Flathead Valley.
But in the end she had backed down, apparently deciding to stick it out and let her son finish high school with his old friends.
Shades figured she thought it was the least she could do since the world had taken his father away under such mysterious circumstances. Though he had disappeared without a trace, all agencies listed him as dead, despite none of Dad’s old connections in the military being able to even confirm whether or not there had been an investigation. Shades suspected he wasn’t supposed to have heard that part of the story, but he had anyway, as children seem to have an uncanny knack for doing.
And had never forgotten. The time was fast approaching when he would have to find a real way to support himself, and though some of Dad’s old friends had made offers, and despite his breaking a long-standing family tradition, Daddy’s little GI Joe had decided that whatever his future held in store, the military would have no part of it. Aside from that, though, he didn’t have much of a plan; he was going to do something, and it wasn’t supposed to involve being a wage-slave.
As he thought about the day’s events, he continued stocking, wishing he could (officially, at least) join his friends’ boycott, pending the elimination, or at least special marking, of censored CDs.
Fortunately, alphabetizing was not a terribly taxing task on his mind, for tonight it mostly wandered back and forth at will between tomorrow’s hike, his conversation with Amy, and his altercation with Carlos. John’s family’s house had come with a large swath of land on the other side of the creek, the same creek that ran past Shades’ old home farther downstream. Just a rickety old plank bridge between them and that fabled gold mine. Not that any of them had ever found even a trace of it.
Not that they let that stop them, either. Of course both of them knew the mine was just an excuse to get out there; what they really sought was adventure. Given how little of it he had found in the real world, Shades had come to surround some of the odd things they found out there with a certain mystique, imagining bizarre and extraordinary circumstances under which they might have ended up out there.
He had already made up his mind that if Amy wanted to hang out with him, he would invite her out hiking some time. If things played out well, maybe even to that barbecue John was talking about. And so Shades’ thoughts kept recycling the same three subjects for the duration of his shift.
Author's Notes:
hitchhikers
It was still coming down hard by the time Shades finally got off work.
Knowing that he was going to get soaked before he even got out of town anyway, he took a good look around the parking lot on his way out. After what happened this afternoon, he wasn’t taking any chances. Carlos was definitely serious this time; in spite of the progressively tougher opponents Master Al had him training with these days, Carlos had still presented the most serious challenge he had ever mustered against him. And both his instincts, and his years of experience dealing with Carlos, told him that was only Round One. Now he would have to be prepared for Round Two, wherever and whenever that turned out to be.
Here in the rain-soaked shadows of the parking lot, his own thoughts turned to darker possibilities as he rewound to an earlier part of their confrontation. …you and your new girlfriend… Which meant that Carlos knew about his meeting with Amy. Shades didn’t like that thought at all. After all, Carlos had dragged his friends into this mess before on a couple occasions…
“Don’t even think about it,” he muttered to the darkness, wondering what he would actually do if it came to such a thing. “This is between you and me. If you drag her into this, I will fuck—you—up.”
Much to his relief, though, there were no nasty surprises awaiting him at his bike, and he was able to leave unmolested. Despite getting to work on time in the face of his delays, his work shift hadn’t been so kind to him. He was waylaid by unexpected tasks near the end, ruining any chance of getting back to Lakeside until after midnight. All he looked forward to for now was a hot shower and dry clothes.
Near the southern outskirts of town, Shades pulled over in a parking lot. He took off his helmet and whipped out a pair of water-proof headphones; like the rest of his gear, he had paid a little extra for stuff that would hold up against the elements. Unfolded and adjusted them before putting his helmet back on and resuming his journey. Now that he was out of the traffic zones, not that there had been much of that to begin with on a night like this, it didn’t matter to him. Aside from not running afoul of the law, he was more concerned about the distraction. After all, it wasn’t as if he could hear much of anything else over the engine anyway.
He would ordinarily have just played a mix tape, but he wanted to hear the weather report. Shades had come to despise the pop-fruitopia wasteland of the commercial airwaves, scattered with only the occasional oasis, an escape from the incessant stream of ads laced with censorship, and the inane commentary that many mistook for the height of human wit. Becoming increasingly conglomerated into repeat-looping broken records, relayed by slave-rigged satellites, all trace of humanity paved over with chrome and neon. The only thing left he could stomach was the “Oldies” station, where at least some of the on-air “personalities” actually had some to speak of, and the music was made by people who had written their own songs, or at least played their own instruments.
While he waited for the weather update, he was rewarded for his patience with Born to be Wild. One of his favorites when he was a kid, he had rediscovered it after he got a steel steed of his own. At least it looked like they were going to play some good stuff while he waited.
It was a twenty-odd-mile drive to Lakeside, and Highway 93 was infamous for its road conditions. He would be lucky if he made it home in time for Dave’s Top Ten List. Then some shower and shut-eye, in just that order.
As he neared the edge of the small town of Somers, he passed the abandoned hulk of an old hotel, said to have recently been purchased by a new owner. Standing in front of the parking lot of the darkened complex was a figure in a trenchcoat and a wide-brim hat, shrouding his face in shadows. He held his thumb out in the customary hitchhiking position, and appeared to be calling out to him.
Though Shades felt bad for him, he decided to keep going. The thought had crossed his mind to give him a lift into town, but even without a full backpack, it was always iffy on whether or not they had any experience on the back of a motorcycle. That, and there was something about this particular hitchhiker he found unsettling.
In matters such as these, he let his instincts have the last word.
Even though hitchhikers weren’t an uncommon sight on any highway, he had to wonder what that guy was doing out there. His best guess was that perhaps the poor man mistakenly thought the hotel was open for business. Yet even that hypothesis offered little explanation for what he was doing out at this hour, in this storm.
Shades was surprised, and slightly disturbed, to find another hitchhiker on the road. This one stood in front of an old service station that flashed by on his left, a large rock face on his right. Again, standing out in the rain without an umbrella.
What he found disconcerting was that this hitchhiker looked exactly like the one he had seen earlier at the hotel.
Somehow being in the middle of Somers no longer made him feel very secure anymore. Even as he told himself that it was just the clothes making them look alike, the song changed to the Doors’ Riders On the Storm. Too much like a soundtrack for this ride home, but he didn’t want to stop and switch to his tape here. Still, he told himself that one coincidence wasn’t enough to get worked up about, but that weird feeling that had hounded him off-and-on all day was back with a vengeance.
If not for the rain coming down in sheets, he would be able to see Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, now that he was past Somers.
As he rode past a beachfront parking lot, he knew he was totally spooking himself because he thought he saw someone coming out from behind a truck parked there, and he reminded himself not to let his imagination get the best of him and kept riding.
A few minutes later, Shades’ radio reception began to waver, making bizarre, eerie sounds in his headphones.
And right in the middle of the Markett’s Out of Limits, which sounded way too much like the theme from The Twilight Zone for his taste, at least under the circumstances. He didn’t have to listen to too much of this before he was forced to pull off onto a dirt road. Having decided that catching the weather wasn’t worth this irritating, and rather unnerving phenomenon, he switched to cassette mode. Then, with visions of weird hitchhikers dancing in his head, he quickly got back out onto the highway again.
On one hand, he was glad his headphones still worked, but on the other, he was alarmed at the radio reception. The fact that he could hear the tape just fine made him doubt anything was wrong with his radio. What that left was the signal itself, some kind of interference, and Shades had never heard of a mere storm causing something like this.
On top of that, he couldn’t take his mind off those two hitchhikers, and what may or may not have been another one in that parking lot. This was getting really weird, and the ideas that kept creeping into his thoughts felt more like the kinds of stories he had read since he was in grade school. Except that he was now experiencing it. Adding to his growing unease was the realization that he was past the half-way point, and he hadn’t encountered a single car since he left Kalispell. Even on a stormy night like this, there should still be a few people traveling such a major highway. Truckers, if no one else.
His suspicions about the shadow in the parking lot were heightened by the sight of another hitchhiker, standing next to a road sign. And, much to Shades’ dismay, he looked exactly like the previous two.
For portions of the highway’s winding path, he passed in and out of lake vistas, with rocky walls on one, sometimes both, sides— what he ordinarily thought of, even after all these years, as beautiful and relaxing scenery for his long commutes— yet this was the first time he had ever thought about how spooky this way could look without a soul around, illuminated only by his lone headlight and occasional flickers of lightning. No streetlights, no buildings, not even other cars for long ways at a time on this deserted stretch of mountain highway. As well as how much of the outlying communities was hidden from the road. He resolved that if he saw even one more hitchhiker the rest of the way, he was calling for help first thing when he got home.
In the meantime, he told himself that he was just psyching himself out, and for a moment he almost started muttering Chris Nimrod’s mantra about there being a rational explanation for everything.
Author's Notes:
evasive maneuvers
When Shades spotted another look-alike hitchhiker standing in front of the entrance to an exclusive lakefront community, he knew old Nimrod would be reciting his Rational Explanations like a bible-thumper quoting long-memorized scripture. Had to admit he wasn’t too far from it himself.
Just what he had been hoping not to see. He was now about ten minutes away from Lakeside, and his mind started asking questions it had previously kept to itself. Starting with: Is there going to be one waiting for me when I get there?
“…And how the hell is that guy getting so far ahead of me in the first place?” he demanded. There were no other vehicles on the road tonight, so he could see no way for him to be hitching rides. “If he’s so damn fast, why’s he hitchhiking in the first place?…”
Who is he anyway? Shades wondered. Are there more than one of him? Is he trying to harm me? Warn me of something?…
The thought also crossed his mind that maybe the guy just needed a lift.
Your tactics are more likely to get you run over than picked up… Shades tried to think of answers, but found that the more he thought, the less he liked what he was coming up with. It all made him think of weird tales and creepy old movies he had seen, but shed little light on his present situation. He was missing a few key pieces to this puzzle, and without them, he could make no sense of it.
In the midst of his whirling thoughts, an ominous idea popped up. If there was more than one hitchhiker, or if the same one was somehow continually passing him, this would probably be happening all along Highway 93. Shades just couldn’t shake the disturbing notion they were all laying in wait just for him.
He veered off onto the next side road he came upon, down in one of the more secluded places near the road, deciding that if he got off the highway he might lose them altogether.
And if those guys are trying to warn me about something, he reasoned, then I’d be out of harm’s way. Same if they were trying to ambush me… Then a less encouraging thought: But what if the goal of these appearances is just to get me off the highway? Not that there’s anyone on it anyway…
If that was the case, then he would be playing right into their hands.
It was starting to drive him buggy, trying to watch the roadside and keep his eyes on the road at the same time. As a general rule most of the houses in this area were either right out in plain sight, or concealed behind a wall of trees. There were occasional clumps of mailboxes and clusters of signposts marked with various street names and addresses.
The only clue as to who lived down here, between towns.
In the pause between songs on his tape, he heard a voice shout, “Hey! Dude! Wait!”
Another hitchhiker sprang into the middle of the road, leaping out from behind one of those signposts.
Shades just barely swerved around his mysterious assailant, almost losing control on the muddy dirt road before regaining his balance.
“Holy shit!” That was way too close. As far as he was concerned, that last encounter just confirmed the hitchhikers as enemies. They were everywhere, and everyone else seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. “This is too much…”
Shades took the first exit he could find, pulling back up onto the highway.
In spite of his helmet, and the sweat now trickling down his neck, he still felt his hair trying to stand on end. He was no longer certain there was anyone or anything in Lakeside that could help him. I’d rather be fighting Carlos than this. Even with the improved martial arts skills, at least he was a known quantity. At least against his old rival, he had some inkling of what he was dealing with.
Now that he was back on the highway, he put the pedal to the metal, going as fast as he dared on this snaking mountain road, in the wet, slippery weather. And trying his damnedest not to think about all the gruesome accidents 93 had set the stage for over the years.
Author's Notes:
out of the storm
As he entered the final stretch leading to Lakeside, Shades was dismayed to see another hitchhiker standing in front of the WELCOME TO LAKESIDE sign. Shades gunned the engine, risking a little more speed on this rare straightaway, as he barreled down the long hill leading into the short stretch of lakeside town that was his home. From here, he could see lights glowing on the main street, and he took some relief from this sight.
This was it. Showtime.
His relief gave way to a new chill that had nothing to do with the cold rain as he shot past another hitchhiker. Who just happened to be waiting on the corner he would have had to turn to get to his house. Now he was certain that it would be wise to stop off somewhere and find out what had happened so far before going home.
Then again, perhaps he had finally out-maneuvered him/it/them with that last move.
Besides, in these treacherous conditions, he had too much momentum to even attempt the turn anyway. Instead, he let up on the gas and coasted into town rather than risk hydroplaning with sudden deceleration. Slowing down as he glided past several businesses, finally slowing down enough to brake safely at a local gas station.
He took it as a positive sign to see both a pickup and a semi refueling out front. Being the only gas station for a good twenty or thirty miles in all directions, it was open twenty-four hours, getting business from travelers at all times of the day. He pulled up right out front, where he could keep an eye on his bike, dismounting with a wary eye for any hitchhiker activity.
Shades had frequented this place since he was a kid, and the owners knew him by name and trusted him, so no one gave him any static about his backpack. One of the travelers was conversing with the old man at the counter. As Shades made his way to the payphone, he happened to overhear a snatch of their exchange.
“…I can’t even get the weather report ’cause the radio’s all screwed-up,” the old man told the other. “Damn thing’s been like that since about midnight.”
“Yeah, and who’da guessed we’d have this storm tonight,” the customer remarked, looking briefly out the window. “I don’t like it, either. I can feel it in my bones. There’s somethin’ real’ unnatural about all this…”
Like Shades needed anyone to tell him that. You don’t know the half of it, gramps… Still he had to admit that part of him was glad he wasn’t the only one to whom strange things had happened tonight. At the same time, the fact that whatever had happened back there was also happening here hardly inspired confidence.
Since this was a potentially dangerous situation he was getting himself into, he decided to call home from here first. It felt so unreal, having come in, not just out of the cold, but seemingly out of the nightmare itself, back in the presence of other human beings again. For a moment, he was almost sure it was all just a figment of his imagination, but the images of the hitchhikers refused to vanish in a puff of logic, and as the old men behind him went on spouting strangely uncharacteristic remarks that all sounded as if they belonged in a B horror movie, something he found rather less than reassuring, he plunked in his quarter and dialed his number.
The line was dead.
That’s it. Home is out. This was just one unsettling coincidence too many. He would have to stay the night someplace else, the question was where. It was too late— and too crazy out on the road— to go back to Kalispell.
It was the thought of his mom that changed his plans, realized that he couldn’t leave until he found out if she was alright. Then he calmed down. He was so freaked-out he had forgotten that Mom was out of town on business this weekend anyway. Still the anger remained, and he found he didn’t want to leave without finding the truth. Though that didn’t change the gut feeling he had about the situation. What he needed right now was someone who would believe him.
He inserted another quarter and dialed John’s number.
In the darkness, a phone rang. And rang. And rang a couple more times.
“John!” a muffled voice demanded from down the hall, “Would ya answer the goddam phone!? And tell your friends they’re not supposed to call after eleven!”
When his family moved to Lakeside, there hadn’t been any room to pack John’s bed. Since then, no one had ever gotten around to getting a new one, so John simply got used to sleeping on his own bedroom floor. A living heap of clothes and blankets, shifted around to suit his purposes.
A hand crept out from under the pile, groping along the floor until it stumbled upon the phone, which it promptly snatched under the covers.
“Hello?…” John mumbled, his usual enthusiasm awol. His brain on vacation, communicating long-distance. His mind was on the other end of the line in its robe and slippers, demanding to know why it was being called at such an ungodly hour. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” an urgent-sounding voice replied. Just as he finally recognized it: “Shades.”
“Oh! Shades!” There was something in his friend’s voice that automatically ratcheted him several notches more awake. Trying to keep it down so his parents wouldn’t hear him, he demanded, “Dude, don’t you know it’s almost one in the morning? You know you’re not supposed to call this late.”
“There’s something weird going on around here.”
“There’s always something weird going on with you. Can’t this wait ’til morning? I just managed to get to sleep.”
Despite John’s protests, the Does went to bed earlier than he would have preferred. And he would continue to do so for as long as he lived under their roof.
“I’m sorry, John, but it can’t.” Shades spoke quickly and quietly, sounding nothing like himself. “There’re these weird hitchhikers out on the road. They all look exactly alike, and they’ve been waiting for me everywhere I go.”
“Shades, I’m tellin’ ya, this had better not be a joke—”
“This isn’t like April Fools! I’m serious, man!” Shades hissed. Then back to the conspiratorial hush. “One of them even tried to attack me! They’ve appeared everywhere I go since I left Kalispell, and there’s no one else on the road out there. I think one of them is at my place. I tried to call, but the line is dead.”
“Come off it, dude! You’re creepin’ me out.” At first he was sure Shades was trying to mess with him, but there was something in his friend’s voice that he found more and more alarming the longer he listened to it. If Shades was faking it, it had to be the best acting he had ever heard in his life. Trying to calm him, he suggested, “If the line’s dead, it’s probably just the storm. And the hitchhikers are probably just that. Don’t have a cow, man.”
“If the storm broke the lines,” Shades riddled him this: “then why am I still talking to you?” And John had to admit, he did have a point. “I know this is hard to believe… but… try your radio. You’ll hear what I mean.”
“You sure it isn’t just the storm?”
“I’m not gonna argue with you man. There’s some weird shit goin’ on out there tonight,” Shades paused for a moment, then resumed, “and I sure as hell ain’t goin’ home by myself. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Try to be ready for me.”
“But dude—”
Before John could utter another word, Shades hung up on him.
“Shit!” he muttered as he crawled out of his warm, comfy cocoon, reaching out and switching on a desk lamp he kept nearby. Carefully turned down the volume so as not to wake his parents, he turned on his alarm clock radio. And was immediately greeted with noises that didn’t sound like any radio signal he had ever heard before.
“Damn…”
Up until now, John had been holding out for the possibility that this was all some weird prank. But there was no way Shades could do this. That, and there was just something in his friend’s voice, the more he thought about it… something wrong.
Trying to keep it down, he threw on some clothes. Once he was dressed, he opened his closet and dug in the corner. Beneath a bundle of shirts, underneath the pile of magazines, was a small steel lock-box.
So spooked had he been by the bizarre nature of what he heard on the radio, that he decided to bring along Old Betsy. Originally, the compact Derringer pistol of whimsical namesake belonged to his great uncle, though now it belonged to him, and his mom insisted that he keep it locked up. Sure, it was low-caliber, and only a single-shot weapon, having to be reloaded after every round, but it was also easily concealed.
John stuffed it in his coat pocket, along with a half-empty box of ammo, as he tip-toed to the door. No harm in being prepared. He stopped in the little entry room, digging in a drawer for a flashlight. Now that he was aware of it, he knew that in a storm like this, the phone lines might not be the only things to go out before dawn.
Shutting the door behind him as quietly as he could, he made his way over to the garage. Seeing as how his parents were probably going to ground him even if everything went smoothly, he concluded that he would rather act now, get chewed out later. He had no idea what kind of trouble Shades may have gotten himself into, but he was going to try to help him as best he could.
On his seventeenth birthday, his father had given him a key to the quad ATV. All he asked was that he kept the tank full and rode sensibly. He doubted this was what Dad had in mind, but he saw no other way. At the least, it would take many moons to save up for a car of his own.
It would be a few more minutes before Shades showed up.
Author's Notes:
riders on the storm
“…I’m not gonna argue with you man,” Shades told his friend. “There’s some weird shit goin’ on out there tonight,” (He paused for a moment, feeling the old men’s eyes on his back, and he shrugged, turning to them with an irritated expression that seemed to say, What? You never heard the word “shit” before?) “and I sure as hell ain’t goin’ home by myself. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Try to be ready for me.”
“But dude—”
Shades hung up, bolting back out front. As much as he hated to cut his old friend off, he wanted to tell his story face to face. He just hoped John wasn’t too angry with him.
All he caught was the tail end of the old men at the counter, apparently having moved on to a new topic: “…But I heard the guy was from outta town, just moved here last week, so they had to let him go.”
“Then I guess that means the real black van driver’s still on the loose…”
But Shades had bigger problems to worry about as he breezed out the door.
“Good, nothing happened to you,” Shades commented to his bike upon seeing that it was still there waiting for him. All the same, he felt a moment of apprehension, remembering his fun meeting with Carlos, until his motor started easily enough. Then he took off.
He had contemplated calling the police, but, just for starters, he had nothing to report. On top of that, although he hated to admit such a level of paranoia, he wasn’t sure the authorities were a wise choice to drag into this just yet. For the moment, he would keep this between himself and John, pending more info.
He continued down the highway past the post office, the bar, the grocery store. Then, at the church that loomed over the turn leading to the local elementary school, standing out in front of it, right in the middle of town, was another hitchhiker. He accelerated past the church, spotting another one standing in front of the café.
Shades hung a sharp right, departing the highway once again. This was the shortest way to John’s house from here.
Even as he neared the top of the hill, he could already see, walking down the long dirt road leading up to the specter of another church, yet another hitchhiker. Without any thought, Shades found himself riding the brakes, then he turned it into a dangerous, but doable, U-turn on this narrow stretch of road. Then again, he also knew the roads would only get worse from there anyway.
Shades cruised down the highway a bit farther, relieved not to see any hitchhikers before his next turn.
As he turned the next corner, he wondered again if he had finally out-maneuvered the bastards. At least there was nothing even resembling a church along this way, though he knew the final test was fast approaching. The compound ahead used to be a military base, but was later shut down and given over to civilian use.
As he rode past lines and lines of trees, he thought about all the things he knew to be behind them. A playground, a park, houses mostly. Somewhere beyond that playground, he had seen an ultra-modern-looking building whose purpose he was never able to ascertain. That just never seemed to belong back there. Yet even knowing this failed to alleviate his anxiety about not being able to see it.
Then there was no more time for such ruminations.
“Oh no you don’t!” Shades told the next hitchhiker even as he detected him. Just as he figured, his next assailant was standing out in front of the run-down guard booth at the old base complex’s entrance. Conditions be damned, he gunned the engine for all it was worth, swerving into the other lane to dodge him.
As he blazed past the rather suburban-looking housing project sprawled out next to the base, he slowed down a bit. Keeping in mind that around the next corner the roads would only get worse from here on out. He splashed past another hitchhiker, this one emerging from an old, spooky-looking road leading into the woods.
The road he took led through open fields, leading farther up the mountain. He traveled some distance before noticing that the hitchhiker at that mysterious entrance was the last one he had seen for about a mile. Now that he was getting close to John’s house, Shades found an uncertain moment in which to ponder his next move. Anymore, he couldn’t shake the feeling that things were shaping up too much like events in one of many books he had read. He was no longer sure what worried him more— if there really was something strange going on, or if this all turned out to be just some bizarre series of coincidences, signifying nothing.
As Shades neared the turn-off to John’s house, he killed the motor, warily walking his bike the rest of the way down. He knew his friend’s parents well enough to know that stealth was of the essence if they didn’t want to get busted. They would hardly approve of the little adventure the two of them were about to set out on, and hearing a motorcycle so soon after his phone call would be a dead giveaway.
John was already waiting out front, and he had brought out the quad ATV.
“Now Shades,” John asked quietly as they pushed their vehicles away from the house, “what the hell is this all about?”
What he wanted more than anything else right now was to be as far out of his parents’ earshot as possible.
“Well, John, that’s what I hope we can find out.” Shades could see that his friend’s leather jacket wasn’t soaked, suggesting that he couldn’t have been standing out here for more than three or four minutes. “This is what I do know. Ever since I left Kalispell after work, I’ve been running into these weird look-alike hitchhikers on all the roads. And I haven’t seen a single car on the road either. And as if that wasn’t weird enough, the radio’s all—”
“I know dude,” he conceded in a voice that was scarcely a whisper. “I tried it, too.”
“And the phone at my place is dead,” Shades finished, wishing he had more to go on. As they finally reached the road, he said, “I just keep getting this strange feeling something’s terribly wrong. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Yeah.” Ever since he heard those eerie sounds on the radio, John also felt a growing sense of disquiet, of something not being right. He really wanted to go back inside and await the dawn, but Shades was his friend, and he refused to let him go it alone. “And I don’t like it. So where to now?”
“My place,” Shades told him with quiet determination. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this…”
By now they decided that they were far enough from the house to risk firing up their engines, and they set out.
This time, though, they took a different route to Shades’ house, one they often used as a shortcut. It was a lesser-known way; if anyone was waiting for them, Shades planned to take them by surprise.
They splashed through impossibly deep potholes, the kind that could only exist on lonely mountain backroads. Thin, dead-looking trees flashed by on both sides in the darkness. At one point they narrowly dodged a fallen tree that took up half the road.
Along the way, Shades wondered if he had seen the last of the hitchhikers. They had appeared with increasing frequency since he passed Somers, and seemed to be lurking around every corner after he entered Lakeside. At least until he hit that last road to John’s house, that was the last one he had seen. For a moment he wondered what would happen if they only appeared to him, how long John would continue to believe him if they didn’t find something.
At last they reached the water tank past the half-way point. From there, their way would take them down a long hill called Troutbeck Rise. They would drop right in on Shades’ home street, completely bypassing the highway entrance.
They both hit the bottom of Troutbeck running, giving any would-be intruders only seconds’ notice of their arrival. Not more than a block’s distance, and they hung a sliding left, heading up the MacLeans’ long dirt driveway.
Shades had lived the last nine years of his life in a white double-wide trailer. The trailer itself sat behind a full acre of fenced-in hillside, where his mom’s Shelties would ordinarily be yapping their heads off, and Shades wondered if she had let them in before leaving on her trip. On top of that, all the lights were out, which he really distrusted; Mom always left a light on for him when he had to work late.
Both of them skidded to a halt in front of the place, peering under its deepset, white-columned porch. The front door hung partway open, something he liked even less than no lights. As he hit the kickstand, unstraddling the bike, a bolt of lightning lit up the night, illuminating the scene in stark clarity, followed seconds later by a blast of thunder. A black-and-white snapshot of broken windows all across the front of the house.
“Dude, I don’t like this,” John told him in the ringing silence of their stilled motors.
“Neither do I,” Shades agreed. He knew the neighbors were on vacation, so there was no point in going next door. He was torn between his fury at whoever had broken into his house, and the disconcerting intuition that he should enlist professional help investigating this, but there was one thing he could make up his mind about. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m with you on that one,” John said, already turning around. “You could stay at… my… place…” He trailed off as he looked back down the driveway, spying a figure in a trenchcoat and hat, matching Shades’ description so perfectly it scared him, plodding slowly up the muddy road. “Uh… Shades…”
“Not again!” Shades muttered. In light of this recent discovery, the only good news he could derive from it was that at least he wasn’t the only one seeing these guys. “Let’s go!”
“Dude! You don’t have to tell me twice!”
As they fired up their engines again, Shades looked over his shoulder, seeing the front door slowly swing wide open. That was the last straw, and he pulled out. They went partway down the driveway, then cut across the neighbors’ sprawling lawn, allowing their mysterious adversary a wide berth.
Neither of them saw the black van rolling out from behind Shades’ house.
Shades and John pulled back out onto the road, but overshot the turn that led back to the highway. Both of them simultaneously wished now that they had made an escape plan as John continued up the road. While Shades went left onto an old logging road leading deeper into the mountains.
Before he could slow down enough to turn around, lightning blasted a massive tree near the corner, sending it crashing down across the road.
He stopped, looking back for a long moment, but John showed no sign of coming back for him. The tree blocked the entire width of the road, and was way too large to get his motorcycle over. And the banks on both sides were too high and steep to attempt in such muddy conditions.
Taking one last look at the smoldering, steaming embers near the base of the shattered tree before starting up again and heading out. He felt terrible about dragging John into this mess; it was his problem, and now his friend was caught in the middle of it. For now all he could do was wish his friend a clean escape to the highway while he attempted to find another road out of this backwoods maze, hoping there was an exit.
But he seriously doubted it. Like his old friend, he was now on his own again.
Author's Notes:
chance encounter
“Whoa! Dude! That was a close one!” John cried as he stopped at the top of the hill. His sigh of relief at their escape was really more like a gasp. He looked back down the road, pleased to see that they had not been followed. “But we made it! Come on, Shades! Let’s make a break for the highway!”
When he received no reply, that was when he realized that not even Shades had followed him.
His attention was taken back by the freak lightning strike that downed a tree along the other road below. He listened for a long moment as Shades’ engine faded out.
“Dude…”
Now that he knew whatever was going on was for real, he didn’t want to be alone out here. For a moment he was torn between his desire to find Shades before they did, and his natural impulse to get the hell outta Dodge. If he moved quickly, he believed he could catch up with his friend. As creeped-out as he was now, he still felt ashamed of the voices in his head urging a swift retreat to the highway, even if it was to call the police.
In the end, his fateful moment of indecision proved a few seconds too long, for even as he heard what sounded like Shades doubling back to the fallen tree:
“Please! Don’t run!” a voice called from behind him.
John turned and saw another hitchhiker, this one approaching from the side of the road. Confirming one thing about these guys he had so far refused to swallow. Shades was right about these dudes! They are everywhere!
John hit the gas, taking off before this stranger could reach him.
“No! Wait!” the hitchhiker called after him.
Then John remembered he was still headed the wrong way. This way led to Shades’ favorite clifftop lookout, from which one could see all the way across Flathead Lake, even to Big Fork, with binoculars. The problem was that the road there was treacherous to take on a vehicle. In broad daylight— and at reasonable and prudent speed— he could do it easily enough, but at night, in this storm…
“Crap! Why’d I do this!?” he demanded of no one in particular as he struggled to stay on the deeply rutted path.
After he felt he had a safe distance to do so, he stopped and listened, preparing to turn around.
“Aw! Come on! Cut me some slack!…”
The hitchhiker again, and closer than he had expected. These bastards are persistent. Not that Shades hadn’t told him, it just simply sounded so far-fetched at the time. In the distance, he heard the stranger call out again.
“Please don’t run! I just want to talk!”
John decided that if he couldn’t shake his pursuer, he would rather face him here than next to a cliff. Not fully trusting the stranger’s words, he clutched Old Betsy in his pocket, ready to take off any second. If talking was all this guy wanted to do, John wouldn’t mind getting some clue about what the hell was going on, as long as talking was all he had in mind.
A moment later, the hitchhiker came in sight, stumbling headlong through the muck.
“John!” the stranger panted, “Please! You gotta help me, dude—”
John stared in shock and astonishment as the hitchhiker, still running toward him, simply vanished into thin air.
John sat there for a long moment, not sure what to think about what he had just seen. Even the sound of his voice was cut off, echoing weirdly. That, and there was something oddly familiar about that voice…
“And how’d that dude know my name anyway?” he muttered. He liked that fact about as much as he liked seeing what he just saw. In both cases, it just cast this whole situation in a new light. If they knew his name, that didn’t bode well for Shades. It meant that both of them were somehow more involved in this than he would ever have guessed.
Mostly his mind kept jumping back to the moment that guy disappeared, kept going in circles in its attempts to make some sense of that scene.
“Hello! Anybody out there?”
John just about jumped out of his seat before realizing that this new voice was a decidedly female one. And from farther up the trail rather than from behind. If there was an ordinary person up there, she could probably use his help.
And vice-versa.
Deciding that it beat being alone on such a freaky night, he called back, “Who are you?”
Gripping Old Betsy and hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
“Amy!” the voice called, after an apparent moment of thought. Then Amy O’Connor stepped out of the trees. Flashlight in hand, soaked through, her long blonde hair hanging straight down. “Dexter, is that you?”
“No… it’s me, John,” he replied, at first thrown off by her choice of names. Dexter? Did I miss something… He wondered if he had somehow disappointed her. Oh well. She’ll just have to live with it. “Amy? What are you doing out here?”
“John…” she said, for a moment pondering what to say next. Not him, but one of his friends. Though she had been hoping for him. Even though he had gone by his chosen handle for years, she had never really thought of him as “Shades” no matter how she tried. “Well, I’m not really sure. I thought I saw him up on the cliff, so I came up here to talk to him. I thought maybe he had seen something. But when I went up there, no one was around.”
Then she paused for a second, seeming to realize that she was getting ahead of herself.
“You see, I’ve been looking for my little brother’s dog. He’s too young to be out here so late, let alone in this weather.” And quite frankly, she wasn’t too happy with the boy right now. If he would just take decent care of his damn dog… But there was an alarm in John’s voice earlier, and a lingering perplexity on his face, and she wanted to know what all that indistinct shouting earlier was about. “But what are you doing here?”
“Well, I don’t know where to begin,” he confessed. “You see, Shades called me about… half an hour ago, said he was in trouble…”
“What kind of trouble?” She had heard about his fight with Carlos, and now he had her undivided attention.
“It’s a long story, dude— uh, I mean dudette…”
“You don’t have to be politically correct with me. But really, what happened to Shades?”
“Well, Shades called me and told me he needed my help.” John was already second-guessing how much of this she would actually buy, pondering the irony of having to sell the truth. “He said he was being chased by these weird hitchhikers that all look exactly alike…”
“Is this some kind of joke?” she demanded, not entirely buying that. Yet she also sensed that he was upset about something. “You guys aren’t pulling my leg here, just because I told him I believed in paranormal stuff?”
“Huh? No dude, I’m totally serious.” Though he knew the next part would be even harder to swallow. But what he really wanted to know was, “Why were you looking for Shades anyway?”
“Well…” Amy paused for a moment, wondering why these sort of things had to be so awkward. “We met at the mall this afternoon, and I kinda asked him out to the movies tomorrow… Didn’t he tell you?”
“No, but I wish he had…” He was mad at being left out of the loop, but only for a moment. For now, he decided to give his friend the benefit of the doubt, telling himself that Shades would have told him tomorrow if he hadn’t had more pressing matters to contend with tonight.
“By the way,” Amy asked, trying to change the subject any way she could, “you wouldn’t happen to know what time it is, would you? I kinda forgot my watch.”
“It’s after one. That’s all I know.”
“Dammit! I’m gonna kill him when I get home! He’s not even my dog, and I’ve been out in this for three hours, shouting ‘Pookie!’ at the top of my lungs like a spaz…”
Her brother Roy was a bit of an afterthought, only in the third grade. Most of the time, she thought of him as something special, though he could also be annoying at times, as was a little brother’s prerogative. Now she remembered bumping into Shades up here a couple years ago, and Roy making smartass remarks about her and Shades— looking back, probably sending Shades on his way before a real conversation could ensue. Realized now that she had been so busy being embarrassed, she hadn’t even considered that he might have been on to something.
She saw the chagrined smirk on John’s face, for a moment getting the irrational feeling that he was somehow giggling about her memory.
“What’s so funny?”
What was so funny was remembering overhearing that name in a conversation, nudging Shades and asking, Who the hell would name their dog “Pookie”?
A blast of lightning straightened him out, and he answered, “Nothing.”
He looked around for a nervous moment, half afraid the hitchhiker might somehow reappear at any moment, then Amy asked him, “Really John, what is going on with Shades?”
“As I was saying, he kept running into these hitchhikers. I’ve even seen these dudes for myself! There was one…” John trailed off in frustration at the tall tale that was his account, when he hit on something he did have proof of. “They even broke into his house.”
“What?” Amy gave him a more serious look with that piece of news.
“Somethin’ real’ weird’s goin’ on tonight,” he told her, hoping that a visit to Shades’ burglarized home would persuade her. Then he remembered what got him out the door in the first place, and he added, spotting her portable radio, “And it’s not just the hitchhikers, dude. Try listening to your radio.”
“Okay…” Amy switched it on. She had originally brought it along on her search to check the weather reports, but it dawned on her that it had been at least an hour since the last time she bothered to tune in.
She was immediately bombarded by a barrage of the most unearthly sounds she had ever heard in her life emanating from the tiny speaker. Of all the possibilities she had expected, this one caught her completely by surprise, and spooked her in a way that not even the most surreal of news reports could have. Enough to believe that maybe John wasn’t yanking her chain about this whole hitchhiker business.
Out of sheer curiosity, she switched to FM, getting a signal that was part weather report, part otherworldly gibberish:
“…Now for… —eather… —ight, we’re call— … —eavy thunder shower— …electrical storm…. —ple are advi— …stay in tonight— in… —ust in… calls from… who say… —eir radio recep— …is bad…”
After hearing as much of this as she could take, Amy switched it off, asking, “What is going on?”
“I wish I knew, dude. I wish I knew.”
Author's Notes:
the Black Van
Shades halted at the next fork in the road. To put it mildly, he was lost.
The region back here was a labyrinth of largely unmarked roads, most of them logging roads, but he knew that a few people actually lived up in the mountains. He had hoped to find one of the reclusive houses hidden out here in the deeper woods, and was having no luck at all. Though he had mentally mapped out many of the trails in the area, he had to admit that he had never ventured far down any of the roads themselves.
But at least I ditched the hitchhikers.
Though he understood full well what that had to mean. That none of them had appeared to accost him since they got separated meant that they had gone after John. Even though they spooked the hell out of him, he still wished they had stuck with him. The only thing worse than that was the knowledge that there was nothing he could do about it out here. His friend, unfortunately, was as much on his own as he himself was.
He had originally chosen this way so he wouldn’t have to ditch his bike, but now he was beginning to regret that decision; if John had doubled back, he might have been able to climb over the bank on foot in time to hitch a ride with him, he just wished he had thought of that sooner.
Today had been a rollercoaster ride even without this last touch. School had been the same-old, but even then he was haunted by a strange feeling, an enigmatic anticipation he just couldn’t shake, and had originally attributed to spring restlessness. Or perhaps it was about tomorrow’s hike— but then he talked to Amy. Then he ran into Carlos, and Shades had to admit that something had re-lit his arch-rival’s fuse earlier this week, and it had burned down fast. After such a mundane time at work, he still felt strange, and, sure enough, his day still hadn’t finished springing all of its surprises on him, saving the weirdest twist for last.
How did it come to this?
Ever since he left Kalispell, everything went straight to hell within the hour. First the radio, then the hitchhikers, on an otherwise deserted highway. Despite his anxious imaginings, he was still stunned that someone had actually broken into his house. Worst of all, though, he had endangered the life of a good friend against an as-yet unknown adversary.
“What else can go wrong?”
Shades was about to try to find his way back, having resolved to stash his bike in the bushes until he could retrieve it, and make his way back into Lakeside on foot, when he heard the rumble of an approaching motor behind him. He turned and looked back, at first seeing nothing. Seconds later, a black van came around the last corner. Shielding his eyes against the van’s high-beams, he read the license plate.
POWRSRJ…
There was something about that word that gave Shades a really bad feeling. Though he didn’t have much time to figure it out, as those headlights locked on to him. Engine roaring, an automotive bull pawing the dirt. The tires squealed as the shadowy driver prepared to charge, throwing mud out behind it in thick streams.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Shades put the pedal to the metal just before the van peeled out. The van giving chase, taking every corner with him. Shades’ quick thinking had gained him at least a couple seconds’ head start.
He quickly discovered, though, that he was running at a disadvantage. Ordinarily, his motorcycle would have superior speed and maneuverability, but in these conditions, he couldn’t really utilize more than half of it. The van, on the other hand, had greater stability with four wheels on the ground, and was holding steady on his tail. Compounding his problem was the fact that the van had a very good driver.
Bogey on your six, Shades! he thought as he poured on as much speed as he dared, It’s the Boogeyvan! And tried not to laugh.
He knew this was going to be a close race, with no second place.
This dragged on for a couple endless minutes, the van breathing down Shades’ neck. It was a constant struggle to maintain control while not giving any ground. And the van stuck stubbornly on his trail at every turn.
“Dammit! Who is this guy?…”
Shades wondered who was driving, if it was one of those hitchhikers, or someone else. That the driver was out here didn’t prove anything in and of itself, but that he had singled him out and attacked him was enough to convince him that his pursuer was somehow involved in all of this. This much he was able to conclude even as he focused on his own driving.
Then they came out on a long, straight stretch, and Shades decided to press his speed advantage. A quick glimpse over his shoulder revealed that he was beginning to pull out ahead.
Naturally, that was when his engine started sputtering out.
“No. Not now…”
Thinking back, Shades realized that he had known the possibility he might be venturing into dangerous territory, from the moment he found his line was dead. Now he wished he had thought to fill up at the gas station when he had the chance. It would only be a matter of seconds before he lost all advantage.
So he did the only thing he could think of.
“Shhiiitttt!!…” Shades cried as he bailed at the next turn. Rolling and tumbling through the mud as his bike slid into the ditch. As he skidded to a halt, landing in some underbrush, he heard a squeal of brakes, followed by a thunderous, crunching crash.
Shades caught a fragmentary glimpse of the van slamming into a tree, its driver unable to turn in time as its quarry made its unpredictable move.
Author's Notes:
deduction, speculation and worry
It took almost fifteen minutes for John and Amy to get the ATV back onto the road. The two of them now stood before the ruined tree at the bottom of the hill. Wherever Shades was, he had at least a twenty-minute head start getting there.
But at least talking to Amy had calmed him down a bit. It wasn’t until after they were past the place where the hitchhiker vanished mere minutes ago that he remembered how nervous he was about setting foot there. Now he was beginning to question whether or not what he saw was even real.
“Do you think he might have turned around?” Amy asked as they examined the massive obstacle barring the way.
“I don’t think so,” John replied. “Hmm… he could probably hit these banks when it was dry out, but when it’s this muddy, he’d probably break his leg if he wasn’t careful.”
And, even though the rain had died down to a fine mist, if Shades had cut across the field, there would be tracks.
Perhaps Amy had thought the same, for she had ambled a little farther along the bank.
“And with this tree blocking the road, that’s the only way he could have gone,” she was saying. “We’ve got to go look for him. It’s a maze back there…”
She trailed off as she spotted a set of tracks going up the bank, on the less steep section near the edge of the field.
“Looks like someone’s been through here…” John remarked, taking a closer look. Two parallel tracks, going in, not out. “And whoever they are, they went the same way as Shades. From the looks of ’em, they belong to a pretty heavy outfit, like a truck or a van or something…”
“The Black Van!” Amy gasped.
“What?”
“Haven’t you heard?” she demanded. “There’ve been a whole bunch of weird crimes around here lately… a hit-and-run, vandalism, couple break-ins, threats. And the only thing they all have in common is that witnesses say there was a black van involved every single time.”
“Oh yeah.” Now that he thought about it, he had heard something along those lines. “Haven’t they caught the guy yet?”
“No. That guy they arrested wasn’t him. Haven’t you read the paper lately? He struck again last night, in Somers.”
“So?”
“So, I’ve just noticed something about all of the Black Van crimes,” she told him, a strange and distant fear coursing through her as she spoke. “All of them have been committed against students and staff at Flathead High.”
“You sure about that, dude?”
“Everyone of them, now that I think about it.” She knew, just knew, that she was on to something. She wondered for a moment why no one else had figured it out. Surely the police must have connected the dots, and she found herself irritated at the thought of them keeping a lid on it just to avoid a panic. Of course, unbeknownst to her, or the cops, panic in schools was the wave of the future. “And if that’s the case, he really is in trouble!”
“That’s what I’ve been sayin’ all along. Which is why I think we should leave this one to the authorities.” As far as he was concerned, they were in way over their heads. “We could get lost back there just as easily as he can.”
“I thought Dexter was your friend!” Amy snapped. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what he meant; she just wasn’t sure she could live with herself unless she tried something. “What good will calling the police do if we can’t prove anything?”
“You know, we might be able to do both,” John said after a moment of thought. Amy was right. Shades was his friend, and they had to try. He was sure Shades would do the same if their situations were reversed. Though he wasn’t so sure they were up to this all by themselves. “If one of us went over to that house,” he pointed to Shades’ neighbors’ house, remembering that Shades’ own line was dead, “we could call the cops. We’d only mention the break-in, or they’ll think we’re nuts, and—”
“You do that,” Amy cut him off before he could finish, grabbing John’s helmet, “and I’ll go look for Shades!”
“Hey wait!” John called out as Amy revved the engine. But it was no good. He watched her back up to take a running start at the shallow part of the embankment, wondering where she had learned to ride. Fingers crossed, he saw her ride across the field, even getting down the steeper side beyond the fallen tree without incident. “You better bring that back in one piece!”
John wished her luck as she rode off into the dark woods. Shades, too. Then he turned to his own part of the plan, muttering, “Dad’s gonna kill me…”
Author's Notes:
getting to the bottom of this
Shades crawled to his feet, amazed that he had sustained no major injuries.
Of course, he had taken it the way he was taught, rolling and tumbling, and came out of it with only a few scrapes and bruises. Lucky not to have hit any trees in the process. Cold and soaked with mud, and already sore from the impact. But otherwise unharmed.
The van, on the other hand, hadn’t fared so well, he could tell that much even in the dark.
Even so, he stumbled down the road, paying no heed to his direction. Keeping near the edge of the road so he could duck into the trees. After a moment, he stopped and looked back down the road to see that the black van wasn’t following him.
He flipped up his visor, wondering how he had even seen where he was going with all the mud covering it. Then he simply took off his helmet, stashing it in the bushes. No choice but to come back for it later, along with his bike.
If he survived this.
Shades shrugged off his backpack, fishing out the flashlight that he always carried. Once he found that he would have to ride home after dark, it was the first piece of equipment he acquired. Now he was pleased to see that it still worked.
That taken care of, he cautiously walked back to the scene.
He was not so pleased when he turned the light on his bike. Just thinking about all the hard work he had gone to…
Shades flashed the light at the van, feeling not a hint of sympathy for the wreck before him. If he’s hurt, it’s his own damn fault. Fists clenched, he turned and strode toward the van.
When the van’s lights spontaneously winked on for a second, Shades literally jumped back from it, nearly slipping in the mud.
And remembered something, finally understood. This almost certainly had to be the van he could have sworn had cut him from the Army Surplus store to work, had to be. Back then he had been too distracted with his thoughts about his date with Amy and Round Two with Carlos, but now that he thought about it, he was fairly sure that same van had followed him all the way to work. That, and he belatedly remembered about the Black Van crimes.
Here was an opportunity to find out who this bastard really was.
He took another step toward the van, then paused again. Was the driver injured? (advantage) Was he armed? (disadvantage) Packing? (major disadvantage) How many people were there? And was this connected to the hitchhikers somehow? Was he one of them?
So many questions. So many risks. And the illegally tinted windows, much like his own specs, betrayed no useful intelligence. Just a shapeless shadow slumped behind the wheel, possibly unconscious, possibly playing possum with a gun clamped in one hand for all he knew.
After weighing the risks, he decided not to go back. Pissed as he was about this whole matter, he decided it wasn’t worth his life. He might not have a face, but he did have something for the authorities to look into. POWRSRJ… How many vanity plates could there be with that name?
That settled, he continued down the road.
Looking back over his shoulder constantly, as if the van were some dangerous animal you don’t dare turn your back on. And listening for any signs of pursuit, as well as keeping an eye out for more hitchhikers. Or some as-yet unseen threat.
He still couldn’t get over how easily he and John had gotten separated. If he had stopped long enough to work out an escape plan, they likely wouldn’t be left on their own in separate predicaments. At least working together, they’d have a better chance.
…A better chance at what? he wondered.
No answer. Just the quiet of the woods.
He got his answer a moment later, in the form of a near-blinding flash, brighter than any lightning. Imprinted on his retina, its reflection across a spiral-shaped ceiling of clouds above. A moment later, the flash was followed by an unearthly roaring sound that washed through the air like an invisible tidal wave, more felt than heard.
This only furthered his belief that whatever was going on tonight was just not right. He had never seen, nor heard of, clouds like that. I really don’t want to know what caused that…
“…Or do I?” Shades was still pretty steamed about his bike, and worried about John. Whatever was going on, it had kept him on the run since Somers. And he was getting very tired of running. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this…”
But how?
The center of that giant spiral seemed to be somewhere off to his left, but even its eye was so huge, he feared he might be chasing a rainbow. Then he remembered that not long after the hitchhikers had appeared, his radio reception had gone all to shit on him. And from John and the gas station, he had learned that it was no better out here. It was a stab in the dark, but perhaps the interference would get stronger the closer he got to the source.
At least it was something.
Remembering the creepy surprise he got last time, it took him a moment to screw up the nerve to turn the radio back on. When he did, he again heard the same disturbing sounds as last time. Only more of it, the signal consisting of sounds the like of which he had never heard before.
But no way to determine a direction.
Then he wondered if FM frequencies were effected. Upon switching, he discovered that the transmissions on this band were part FM signal, part distortion. And he only needed to walk a hundred yards or so down the road to notice that the signal was becoming increasingly distorted.
FM was more sensitive to the interference.
Armed with this information, Shades set out to get to the bottom of this. For real this time. Moving in a direction that intensified the disruption, he walked along.
Cold. Wet. Muddy. Tired. But no longer lost.
Author's Notes:
a strange 9-1-1 call
After listening to Amy’s motor drone out of earshot, John climbed around the fallen tree, then up the bank that formed the edge of Shades’ neighbors’ property.
It was slow, slippery going until he reached the braced platform that was the base of the neighbor kids’ half-completed tree-fort project. Once on level terrain, he hit the ground running, able to smell the garden (and the compost heap) even through the misting rain. Past the barn-like garage to the house itself.
A squarish three-story affair with many windows facing the road, a dark-stained wood block. The front door was underneath the porch above, shrouded in darkness. John started by pounding on it; though Shades had told him they took a lot of vacations, he had no desire to get busted along with whoever broke into his friend’s house.
When no one answered after several rounds of pounding, he rammed it, wishing there were more houses around here. It was at least two blocks’ walk to any other houses in the neighborhood; even with Old Betsy, he didn’t feel very safe with those hitchhikers. The door proved as solid as it looked.
As a last-ditch effort, he actually tried the knob, finding it locked, as he figured. Just one of those days when he wished Shades, or even Arthur, had taught him how to pick locks. Stepping back, he peered up at the porch, spotting the sliding glass doors, seeing no way to climb up.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted their enormous trampoline sitting out in the yard, and inspiration struck.
John went out and hauled the trampoline in front of the house. As he dragged the heavy frame along, he glanced over at Shades’ place, and the mere sight of it gave him the creeps. It just sat there, and he kept expecting something to happen…
He shook his head, and those thoughts. I’m not a little kid anymore. He told himself that the sooner he could get the police out here, the better.
Finally, he maneuvered the trampoline into place. Wishing he could do this sort of thing more often in spite of himself, he started jumping. As he built up his momentum, he wondered why, ordinarily, the bad guys got to have all the fun.
John’s first attempt proved that it was possible to reach the rail. But it was slippery, and he lost his grip, falling back onto the trampoline. He bounced high on his back a couple times before he ran out of bounce, then climbed to his feet and made another try.
This time he didn’t lose his grip, straddling the railing and staggering onto the deck.
“Score!” John proclaimed upon finding the sliding door unlocked, as he suspected. Inside was an expensive-looking master bedroom, and beyond that, a hallway. He fumbled for a light switch, finally finding one, and much to his relief, the power was still on.
The stray thought occurred to him that Sandy’s house was just down the street from Shades’, and he wondered if even his friend’s religious nut of a mother would deny him if her son’s friends were in danger. But it was too late for that now, he told himself, deciding that he had gone through too much trouble getting in here to walk away without first accomplishing something. That, and as spooky as it was wandering around an empty house on a night like this, he still felt it was better than stumbling around out in the storm.
Around the corner was a dining room, and a phone hanging on the wall next to the counter.
He picked up the receiver, still more relieved to get a dial tone. Though by this he now knew that Shades’ intruder had done more than just break a few windows. This just kept getting worse.
Wasting no time, he dialed 9-1-1 and got a swift answer. When the man on the line asked for information, John nearly forgot what he had to say, then told him, “My name’s John Doe,” (and winced, realizing that his name was now tied to this house no matter what he said later) “and I’m calling to report a break-in.”
Or two, he thought bitterly.
“Is the place you’re in being broken into?”
Well, yeah, now that you mention it, but that’s not the problem…
“No, it’s the place next door,” John explained. “I don’t know the address, but it’s in Lakeside…” This was getting worse with every word that flew out of this mouth. “My friend— he lives there— Shades, uh, I mean…” Don’t call me… “Dexter! Dexter MacLean is missing!”
“Could you please calm down. We’ve been very busy tonight…”
“What the—”
At first, the voice on the other end of the line began to waver. Then the air around John started shimmering. He fumbled the phone as he stumbled back— and the room changed.
“Hello?… Hello?… Is anyone still there?…” the voice on the phone kept demanding. But the receiver hung near the floor in a perfectly empty room in a perfectly empty house. A bright light flashed through the windows, followed by an eerie sound the dispatcher could not identify. “…Don’t hang up, sir. Help is on the way… Hello?…”
Meanwhile, John found himself stumbling in the dark. Somewhere.
“—the fuck?…”
He blinked a couple times, and his eyes began to adjust to the gloom. It was night here as well, so he could see only by the scant light of the moon shining in a few windows. Now he could see that he was standing in the middle of an enormous great hall with a wide stairway leading up to the next floor. For lack of anything better to do, John walked up the steps.
Anxious of every step, afraid he might end up someplace else. Trying to decide if this was really happening, or if he had hit his head falling off the railing, or if this whole mess was all just some weird dream. Or what. Each step a slow-motion dream-step, just at the thought of being an intruder here.
At least until a voice demanded from around the next corner, “Who the hell are you?”
“Looks like an interloper,” another voice answered as two men in white uniforms stepped around the corner.
“Who are you dudes?” John asked as he tried to figure out whether to talk or run. Both of them wore a strange tank on their backs, with a hose running to something that looked decidedly like a weapon to him. “What happened? Where am I?”
“Nice try, intruder,” one said, raising his weapon.
“We ask the questions around here, young man,” the other told him darkly.
John turned to run, but the men fired their weapons at him. Both guns sprayed a fine, clear mist at him. As he ran, the mist clung to him, and began to harden.
By the time John reached the bottom of the stairs, the stuff had solidified to the point that he could no longer move.
The two men walked casually down the stairs. John listened anxiously to their every footstep. He craned his neck around as much as he could, straining even harder at the sight of the syringe in one of their hands. The man injected him with something, and he started feeling drowsier by the second.
It was only as the sedative began to take effect that he realized the irony; Old Betsy, still tucked in his coat pocket, and the thought had never occurred to him to use it. Now his best chance of escape was lost altogether.
As he faded to black, he heard their next words.
“Spray-Net. Gets ’em every time.”
“We’ll have to question him when he comes to,” said the other. “He doesn’t look like paramilitary material to me. I want to know how he got this far inside the security perimeter.”
“Yeah, I know. And after that, it looks like Dr Pelkey’s got a new guinea-pig…”
Author's Notes:
hashbrowns & 86
Shades halted in the middle of the road.
For a brief moment, through the growing distortion in his headphones, he thought he heard the sound of a motor. Jolted, he looked around for a moment, then just stood there. Understandably, he had become rather wary of any homicidal vehicles that might be lurking in these dark woods.
Yet there was nothing. Not even headlights.
Then again, the more he thought about it, the more he believed it had sounded more like it was in his head. Or his headphones, he wasn’t sure. It was hearing John’s voice saying Who are you dudes?… Where am I?… and hearing the fear and confusion in his voice, that Shades found really disturbing.
For some reason, it all reminded him of something that happened during Christmas Break. He was in the midst of reading a book, when this inexplicable dread struck him. This intuition that something bad was going to happen to someone he knew, and it stuck with him all day.
He had called up all of his friends, even John, who was visiting family out of state. His mom didn’t appreciate the long-distance bill that month, but Shades had insisted. Yet after asking around, he found that nothing was wrong. Even after that, he called around every other day for about a week on account of his lingering dread, but he never did find out what came of it, and he meant to do some research, yet never got around to it.
When his mysterious apprehension had reached its peak, it nearly drove him to distraction. He sat on his bed most of that afternoon, grappling with this worrisome intruder that had slipped in through the back door of his mind. Finally, he just found himself thinking, over and over, Hold on… Be strong…
Such was his mantra for that day.
Whenever he thought about that day, he remembered having felt as if he had somehow willed his thoughts somewhere, had somehow sent part of himself, in a way he couldn’t even begin to explain. What made it even stranger to him was that there was an eerie familiarity to it. Willed your chi… Just the word itself put him in mind of another long-time student of Master Al, a guy named Greg, who was really into mystical stuff. Somehow he never really got the chance to talk to him about much of it, and now he wished he had.
It was the closest thing to what he was experiencing now.
Before, he was merely worried about John. Now he was certain something bad had happened. He felt frantic urges building up inside, and he just kept telling himself that his friend could have gone anywhere by now, that the best thing he could to help him was to find the source of this whole mess.
A moment later, as if he didn’t have a heavy enough load on his mind, he heard another voice in the swirling blizzard of weird noises, one he would never have thought to expect. He would swear up and down that he heard the sound of a motor again, then Amy. Saying something about hash browns and eighty-six… but it was rather distorted.
All the same, he didn’t like it.
Author's Notes:
driving off the map
Amy rode swiftly down the dark road, visor flipped up to see through the misting rain.
Once down the bank, she had passed the point of no return, and there was nowhere to go but forward. Based on what she did know, she was pretty sure she knew the risks, but she would be lying to herself by insisting that she wasn’t afraid. Be careful, a voice in the back of her head warned, You also go to Flathead High. Somehow she knew the Black Van was out to get her, too. And not just because of what school she went to. She couldn’t understand how she knew, yet she didn’t have time to puzzle it out.
In spite of the mounting objections from various corners of her mind, she had a friend to rescue. (Though she had yet to see if he was boyfriend material.) After all, how was Shades supposed to go out with her Saturday night if he was roadkill?
Steeling herself against unknown dangers, she pressed on. With all the rain that had fallen earlier, there were no tracks for her to follow. No clue to where Shades, or the other vehicle, which she had her own strong suspicions about, had gone. At least she hadn’t run into any of John’s hitchhikers. Still, the odds were hardly on her side, she knew she had no serious chance of finding him.
All she could do at each fork in the road was guess, yet she still held to a nagging intuition. The only thing she could think of to compare it to was something that had happened to her during Christmas vacation. The rest of her family had taken a cruise to Hawai’i, but she had come down with a really vicious case of the flu at the last minute and ended up staying behind.
Turned out she was even sicker than she had thought. All of her friends, even Shelly, were also out of town on vacation, so she had ended up home alone for two days. Sick in bed, and having fevered dreams about which she would remember little after the fever finally broke.
That grey December day, she had felt something terribly off about everything around her. The house stood empty, yet for most of the day she did not feel alone. At the height of her fever, it took her an entire hour of lying in bed with her legs crossed before she finally summoned the nerve to go to the bathroom. It was only after her fear of pissing herself finally outweighed her fear of the familiar shadows she was jumping at that she at last took action.
By the time she staggered back to her room, wielding a broom from the bathroom closet, locked her door and crashed in bed, she found a moment to wonder how even a fever could make her so paranoid and delusional. This was nothing like her, yet she sensed a shadow and a threat haunting her most intimate surroundings. In her weakened state, she could only keep her eyes open for so long before falling asleep in spite of herself.
Even by the next day, all she remembered of it was a blur of scary images, a sense of being repeatedly chased and cornered in some surreal game of cat and mouse. Delirium, fear, and desperation. And, at the heart of it all, a constant pressure to just give in, but to what, precisely, she had no idea. Only the premonition that it would be worse than the chase itself.
It was maddening, as if she couldn’t wake up, no matter how real yet unreal it all seemed. Near the end, all she wished for was to make it stop, to just wake up, and she cared less and less about how.
Then, just when she could stand no more, had tired of running, a voice had called out to her. Like the rest of the details, most of it was lost to her waking mind. But she remembered hope, and finding strength enough to break free of this bizarre nightmare.
Of course, Amy had been grateful for this mysterious helping hand, even if she had no idea where that extra strength had come from.
Since then, at least most of the time, she attributed the entire ordeal to the highest fever she had ever had in her life, but at times like this she had to wonder. Something about her search made her think about that day. This entire forest was starting to feel the same way her house had that day, and she kept expecting things to jump out at her. She suspected she had felt a hint of it earlier, but she was too preoccupied looking for Pookie, and dismissed it as just the storm.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
Despite the temptingly simple explanation of a high temperature temporarily short-circuiting her brain, the whole experience had somehow turned her world upside down. She spent the past several months completely lost in her own life, lost in thought, lost in memory. It came and went, but never went away, and now she understood that in recent years, she had drifted with the current too long.
She used to have such wild dreams when she was a kid. In time, a lot of it had slipped away, for it had been longer and longer since she had them, but even now, she was pretty sure he had put in an appearance or two along the way. Had slipped away, and in the waking world, her life had gradually become duller for it. Now she realized that after merely meeting Shades, she secretly hoped those dreams would return. Indeed, she had drifted too long, now it was time to reassert herself, and she was beginning to believe Shades was a part of that. Of getting out of her life. Even before she noticed him, she realized that Shades had always been ready to lend her, as well as anyone else who needed it, a helping hand. But especially her. Though he had his own circle of friends, he had never played the Clique Game, despite the Game trying to play him.
Whatever had befallen him tonight, Shades didn’t deserve it, of that she was certain. On top of that, she told herself, he had made a date with her, and she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. He was one of the nicest guys she’d ever met, and that counted for a lot with her.
A moment later, her runaway train of thought was derailed by what had to be the brightest flash of lightning she had ever seen. On its heels came a subsonic wave that jolted the very handlebars of her ride. She slowed to a halt, at a total loss. That strobe of light had startled her, reminding her of the probabilities she was challenging with every choice, that what she really needed was some kind of confirmation.
Amy found the answer to her unasked question square in the circles of her headlights.
At the next bend in the road was a familiar motorcycle lying in the ditch. Farther down the way, barely illuminated by her headlights’ beams, was a severely leaning tree, so young and skinny to have met such an unnatural fate, looking as if it had been struck with considerable force. Even as she sat there idling, she realized that she had been so engrossed in her worries, she might have ridden right past this important clue without even noticing.
At least now she knew she was on the right track. A quick look around revealed no one about, so she called out several times. When she received no reply, it only increased her suspicions. If Shades was on foot, and especially if he was injured, she knew he couldn’t have gone too far. So she took off again, hoping to catch up before it was too late.
She wasn’t sure what she might be too late for, but if it involved this Black Van business, she knew she couldn’t afford to be.
A couple turns later, the air started shimmering around her. Too shocked to brake, she rode for several more seconds as the air wavered from dark to light. Then stayed, the dark and trees and misting rain replaced by broad daylight, wide open terrain, and a clear blue sky.
The old logging road replaced by a two-lane strip of pavement.
When, a few seconds later, the idea finally occurred to her to hit the brakes, she stopped in the middle of the road. She was nearly blinded by the abrupt change of lighting, and so startled she had nearly swerved into the other lane trying to “avoid” whatever had just happened. Where she was once on a dirt road in the mountains, she was now sitting in the middle of a highway on some arid plain, surrounded for fathomless miles by scrub and mesas and emptiness.
Still blinking away the brightness, she took in the scene before her. At first, she was positive she must be hallucinating, but even as she sat there, she could feel dry heat pounding down on her, shimmering back up from the asphalt. Only a trace of pungent forest scent clung to her damp jacket, other-wise all she smelled was dry, windswept, sun-baked. Nothing at all like the Flathead Valley.
She knew, just knew, she was in another world.
Though a part of her insisted that she had merely been transported somehow to another part of her own world, there was also this gut feeling. That no matter how far down that road she drove, she would never find anyplace she had even heard of. Feeling for all the world like she was trapped in one of her dad’s old sci-fi flicks, her mind started piecing together all of the strange phenomena that had intruded into her everyday life in the past couple hours.
Thinking quickly, Amy turned around, heedless of which lane was which. Fortunately, the road was deserted in both directions for miles, so she doubled back as close to her point of entry as she could figure. If she had somehow crossed into another dimension or something, she didn’t want to stay on this side for long.
Ultimately, her back-and-forth passes were of no avail. After crisscrossing the entire width of both lanes, she finally gave up. Whatever way she had passed was now clearly closed to her.
“I don’t believe this…” Amy muttered, stopping in the middle of the road again. Perhaps the universe did have a sense of irony. Remembering all the things she had said only hours ago, mostly to irritate Chris Nimrod, later to break the ice with Shades, every word now mocking her. Remembering something Shades had said earlier, some quip about his aunt’s old family joke, about how things that get lost end up in the Twilight Zone, she said, to whatever gods might be listening, “I take it all back…”
Myriad questions swirled through her head, and she had no answers to any of them. Where? Why? How? Was this happening all over Lakeside? What was going on? What would Shades think when he finds himself stood-up at the show tomorrow night? Was he even still there to be stood up? She fought down panic, finally settling for a buzzing undertone of anxiety.
Amy dug in one coat pocket, producing a pair of mirrorized sunglasses. She had originally bought them after she talked to Shades, a sleeker version of his style, just for fun. Now they were the only way to see what she was doing against the glare without squinting, which was already starting to give her a headache.
Ahead of her she saw a road sign, green and white and hauntingly familiar by design.
“Ashton, 86... Coyote Downs, 108…”
And another a short way beyond it, advertising Scenic Naz-Nak Mesa.
She wondered if perhaps Shades had ended up here as well. If anyone here might have a clue about what was going on. If there was any chance of getting back. She still harbored some hope that she was in her own world, but for some reason she doubted it. Something about this place felt different, the light was different, the air even smelled different.
With as much decisiveness as she could manage, Amy concluded that all sitting in the middle of the road would get her was run over, she turned the ignition and set out again. Eighty-six miles to Ashton— wherever the hell that was— eighty-six miles of desert highway to some answers, she hoped.
She knew, just knew, she was in trouble. In spite of all of the pavement running for eternity in both directions, she understood that she was past that proverbial point where the blacktop ends. All on her own. Shades may very well have ended up here, too, and if he was, she was determined to find him.
Either way, she felt she had a long road ahead of her…
Author's Notes:
Non-Euclidean Space
Shades was at a total loss.
After traveling a couple miles on foot, he had reached a point where even the FM band was completely distorted, no matter how far down the dial he tuned. Had narrowed it down to where he was so close to the source that it no longer mattered how far he went in the same direction. On top of that, it was past two in the morning, he was cold and wet, and plagued by unforeseen perils.
The only thing he was sure of was that he couldn’t be too far from the source anymore. He stood in the middle of the road in frustration before deciding that if he was close enough to whatever was causing the interference, he might he might be close enough to hear something else. Vehicles, machinery, voices, something that might lead him the rest of the way.
He took off his headphones and listened.
At first all he got was silence. His ears were still ringing from those bizarre noises on the radio. As his ears adjusted, though, they started picking up an odd, distant humming sound.
Staying close to the edge of the road, in case another vehicle came, he continued down the way. He quickly discovered that he couldn’t tell if he was getting any warmer. In spite of his limited visibility, he began to wonder if he might be able to see more from atop a tree.
He spotted a tall, sturdy-looking tree and started climbing. Taking extra care on the wet, slippery branches. Tree-climbing was pretty much a given for anyone who grew up in the mountains, and it didn’t take Shades long to clear the tops of the surrounding pines.
“What the hell…”
From on high, Shades could see what awaited him farther down the road. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, was a massive, geodesic dome-shaped building, the strangest-looking house he had ever seen. And as if that wasn’t unusual enough for him, there were psychedelic multicolored lights flashing and flickering in all the windows. There was an eerie shimmering in the air around the property, and from up here, without the trees dampening it, he could clearly hear that mysterious humming sound was definitely emanating from inside that place.
This had to be the source.
He quickly, but carefully, descended the tree and sprinted in the direction of the peculiar estate. By no means were all the facts in, but he was certain this was some kind of experiment. Images raced through his head, of laboratories, strange equipment, and mad scientists from every sci-fi flick he had ever seen.
Even as he slowed down to a brisk walk, deciding to save his strength for whatever new surprises awaited him, Shades failed to detect the old threat creeping up on him. So lost in thought he never noticed the black van at all. Headlights broken, dark windshield cracked, fender bent all to hell, but still barely running.
Hidden in shadow, the driver cracked a wolfish grin, slowly accelerating. Sneaking up on his unsuspecting quarry. Glimpses of Shades’ flashlight, and finally climbing that tree, had led the way right to him. Ears blinded by his headphones, Shades had been unaware of his dark hunter.
But neither Shades, nor the shadowy driver, was prepared for what happened next.
As a child, Shades’ imagination often ran away with him, and he had spent his early years wandering the border between the “real” world everyone was familiar with, and those eerie times and places where Reality begins to unravel. “Non-Euclidean” space: space which has more dimensions than length, breadth and depth… in which anything might be possible. Often told it was all in his head, but somehow he knew better. He had such wild, crazy dreams back then compared to now. Though he would often wonder about it when he was older, in those days he felt the Twilight Zone (as he thought of it) reaching out for him from time to time. In the years in between, he had read all those books about the Unknown… And now he took his first step into Non-Euclidean Space.
Into the Twilight Zone.
Author's Notes:
looking for the Dipper
“The hell….”
Shades was not entirely sure what just happened. For a moment, he could have sworn he heard an engine behind him. Yet before he could turn around, the air started wavering like heat waves, just like it was around that weird building. A split-second of vertigo, of displacement.
Now the air was back to normal, but he was unsure of whether anything else was.
He noticed he was still in the woods. But no longer on a dirt road; instead he was standing on a well-worn trail. Gone was the humming noise, replaced by near-total silence. And above him the sky was clear and cloudless, the earth below showing no sign of rain recently. He could look up and see the stars shining with uncommon brightness.
Just out of curiosity, Shades turned his radio back on. Nothing but static up and down the dial. At first, he paced back and forth, but was unable to “step” back to where he was. Unable to think of anything else to do, he started following the trail, hoping it would lead to some answers.
After a few minutes, he ears began to pick up indistinct sounds ahead. About ten minutes later, he neared the edge of the woods. Soon he could see lights through the thinning trees. After all of the dangers he had passed through thus far, he approached the edge with great caution.
“I don’t think we’re in Kalispell anymore, Toto…” Shades commented to no one in particular as he gazed upon the vast parking lot stretching beyond the edge of the woods. Just from here he could see hundreds of cars lined up to where a colossal building dominated the horizon. “Damn! That thing’s bigger than… well…”
After a moment, he had to admit that it was bigger than any building he had ever seen; somehow, all of this just did not belong out in the mountains.
The nearer he drew, he more the place looked like a mall to him. For years he had heard activists claim that one day “they” would tear down the forest and build a stripmall, but this was too much.
“Well, any port in a storm…” he decided as he set forth across the expanse of parking lot. Any port in a storm, he thought, looking up at an ironically clear sky. That, of course, he reminded himself, must be at least part of the problem; only minutes before, he had been trudging through a storm.
He scanned the sea of stars for his Dipper, finding, to his dismay, that he could not place any of the constellations. Thought of an old filmstrip he was shown when Dad was stationed in Alaska years ago, but couldn’t quite remember the legend. Something about some Eskimos and a bear…
Still he couldn’t find it.
This troubled him greatly. The Dipper was friendly— it was the only constellation that didn’t try to hide from him. For no matter how many times he looked through astronomy books, he was never able to make the heavens conform to those star charts.
But what troubled him still more was noticing, upon closer inspection, that the stars almost seemed to have a pale green cast. He continued to scan the alien sky, sure he could find his Dipper if he just looked in the right direction. Certain that if he could just find his Dipper, everything would be okay.
It felt weird to be walking among cars in a place where he should be walking among trees. Something about this place felt wrong— terribly wrong— but he couldn’t really figure out what he was supposed to do about it. Still pissed about his bike, and the rest of his ordeal so far, he settled for writing If you can read this, it’s time to wash your damn truck! on the back of a particularly dirty pickup with his finger. He was cold and confused and unable to figure out how to get back to the place he was before, so he decided to step in and thaw out before he got sick or something.
Other people passed through the lot, all of them dressed in familiar clothing. Some of them gave him peculiar looks, and Shades had no trouble seeing why; they were likely trying to figure out how he got so wet and muddy when it clearly hadn’t rained around here in at least a day or two. He shrugged off the occasional rude remark as he made his way to the monolithic structure before him, having more urgent matters on his mind right now.
If I’m in the future, he contemplated, then people sure haven’t changed much. And if he was in another world, he couldn’t really tell the difference. Even the cars looked like any others he had seen in his life. Unimpeded, technology moved in only one direction: fast-forward. The technology here looked like that of the present, rather than that of some distant future. Yet he could never imagine anyone in his lifetime building a mall in the middle of the mountains.
Well, there’s only one way to find out…
He opened the door and entered.
Beyond were grand halls lined with benches, booths and displays, storefronts marching up and down both sides. Much of the upper architecture was outlined with neon tubes of various colors, the floor done in familiar patterns of colored tiles. Everything looked brand-new.
Before I check anything else out, he decided, I’d better try to blend in a little more. To that end, he turned and looked at him self in the door’s glass panel. They were right.
“I do look like I escaped from a war-zone!”
“You sure do!” some passerby assured him with a laugh as he passed.
Not far from the entrance was a map, and it only took him a moment to find what he needed.
Author's Notes:
drying off
People must have wondered what the young man in the men’s room was doing, running his jacket, jeans and shirt under one of the hand-dryers.
But Shades really didn’t give a damn what they thought. This would only be an embarrassing situation if he allowed himself to be embarrassed. So he simply stood there in his underwear, drying his clothes, which he had just finished wiping most of the mud off of with paper towels at the sink, smiling sheepishly at the people who stared at him as they came and went.
Mostly hoping no one called security or some other stupid crap.
And wishing he had a towel. Realizing that he was in another world, and no longer had any idea where his own was. Tried not to laugh as he continued.
He listened to his tape as he worked, thankful for the foresight to keep backup batteries in his backpack. As a further experiment, he had tried the radio again, finding nothing on either band, furthering his growing belief that he was indeed in another world. The fact increasingly baffled him as he got older, but for some reason that defied his comprehension, people still listened to the radio all the time on Earth.
But if this is another world, he wondered, then why is the vandalism here so familiar?
Through the bathroom mirror, he peered into the empty stalls, deciphering the larger inscriptions. It only took him a couple minutes to get the hang of reading backwards, and the varied commentary revealed itself to him. From low-brow pranks (flush twice / its a long way to centralict and All-Roy was here) to politics (Fuck Authority!— with an “anarchy” A and the f-word scratched out to where it was barely readable— and the hauntingly familiar wipe your ass with a spotted owl), it was really nothing new. Though he made a mental note to find out where this “Centralict” was.
As strange as it must have looked to everyone else, his plan was working. The one downside of denim, he reflected, was that it took forever and a day to dry, but once he was finished, he would be ready to explore this mysterious place. One thing he would have to find out was what time it was here. No mall he had ever heard of was open at three in the morning.
The past twenty-odd minutes had afforded him time for some serious thinking. He still didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he was starting to get an idea. This whole situation was starting to sound a lot like the kind of scenarios he read about in some of the stranger books he had come across over the years. The more he thought about that weird house, the more certain he was that someone had been performing some kind of experiment out in the mountains. The success of that experiment was a question mark, but one result was causing fractures in space-time, opening gateways to other planes of existence.
“In your face, Nimrod!” he muttered as he continued to work.
It was only a partial explanation, but it was the best his tired mind could come up with out of the scant puzzle pieces he had. It still offered no clue about where the hitchhikers fit in. Even the Black Van was an enigma, especially why its driver had singled him out. The most disturbing thought was that this might be happening up and down Highway 93 tonight.
He continued to think as he worked, trying to keep the nagging fear in the back of his mind in check as he hypothesized.
Author's Notes:
the Arcade of the Gods
Walking around in dry, not to mention less dirty, clothes tended to attract less negative attention around here, Shades noticed. At least now he no longer looked like a drifter or a fugitive. He had rearranged his gear, stuffing smaller items in various pockets, discarding his work pants and shirt (deciding to make up some story later about how he lost them in the chase), as well as some other junk, so he could flatten his backpack and wear his jacket over it. Thankful that he had his homework locked down for this weekend, so he didn’t have too many textbooks to dispose of. Had checked himself in the restroom mirror and decided there was nothing more he could do.
The mall had turned out to be even more massive than he expected, seemed somehow bigger on the inside than it had on the outside. He had wandered the halls for over an hour, but so far he refused to step in anywhere. He scanned the progression of storefronts, but there were no familiar names in sight. Along the way, he had seen stairways, elevators, escalators, all suggesting multiple floors. At last, he came out into a giant atrium, with several levels stretching above and below him.
So far, though, he hadn’t seen a single indication of what time it was. According to his own watch, it was well after two. He should have caught the Top Ten, a quick shower, and at least a couple z’s by now.
When he reached the atrium, Shades took an escalator up, deciding to explore this place from top to bottom. If ways had opened to this place, he felt a growing hope that John might have ended up here, as well. If the hitchhikers didn’t get him first. But there was nothing he could do about it in this world, and if John did end up here, this mall would be a likely destination, a place to come in out of the cold. He told himself that perhaps tomorrow they would embark on an even bigger adventure than they had originally planned as he looked over the side.
From the top level, those at the bottom of the atrium looked almost as small as bugs, and he wondered exactly how many floors there were.
On this level, he found an arcade. Club Positronic, proclaimed the half-Arabic/ half-alien neon-green script flowing over the entrance. The outside looked fairly modest, but the interior was anything but. Inside he found a dark maze of video game consoles, illuminated by fluorescents, black-lights and strobes. Hard techno music blasted out of speakers along the ceiling, and he quickly spied several TV screens, some showing music videos, some showing games in progress so others could watch the action, all mounted near the same height as the speakers.
The more Shades looked around, the surer he was that he must be, had to be, dreaming this, so dazzled was he by the sheer variety of games. Some he hadn’t seen since he was a child, others that looked like some mad geniuses’ vision of the future. Signs pointed to various sections: 8-Bit Oldies, Old School, Analog Alley, Kombat Klassics, Head-2-Head, and Dance-A-Tron were some of the signs he spotted.
His upward gaze revealed that he was still seeing only half the picture. Through gaps in the ceiling, he could see a whole other level above, with wide walkways crisscrossing over the first floor, and more machines at the junctions. It took him a couple minutes, but his exploration turned up a spiral stairway leading up to one of the junctions.
Up top, the air was hotter and heavier, the music louder, the lights brighter. Now that he knew what to look for, he spotted several more stairways scattered throughout, even an elevator door. Not only were there more games, but pool and air-hockey tables, banks of pinball machines along two outer walls, as well as vending machines and a couple tables. Along with a notice that all food and drinks were to be confined to that area.
It was almost like being a little kid again, he had to keep reminding himself that he had precious little money to his name right now, and couldn’t blow it on tokens.
As he drifted from section to section, he thought about how the revolutions and evolutions of computers and console systems had begun to undermine the arcade scene. It was getting to where people were less willing to fork over fistfuls of quarters when they could just pay one price to play as much as they wanted. Though he could sympathize with that sentiment, he also thought it rocked that there were still places where strangers gathered to play like this.
The Arcade of the Gods, he thought as he shifted from one game to the next, shifted from fond memories to future visions, his friend’s situation left to simmer on the backburner.
Author's Notes:
a grim warning
Shades found himself ascending another escalator through another atrium, having satisfied (for now) his fascination with Club Positronic. He had milled around for a couple hours, until he felt like his eyes were nearly burnt-out, probably bloodshot under his shades, and his feet were just about killing him. What finally prompted him to leave was looking at his watch, and realizing that he had been staring at a fighting game called The Crossfire Gang 2: Tomcat’s Revenge for over an hour in and of itself.
It was almost four o’clock by his watch.
In spite of all the hard-to-believe things that had happened to him in the last hour, hardest of all to own up to was that, in the midst of all this, he had somehow spaced out enough to stand around watching video games for over two hours. In spite of his fatigue, what got his feet moving again was thinking about where John might have gone to, what he might have gone through. He wasn’t sure what he was more ashamed of, being distracted so easily in the middle of an emergency, or not noticing for so long.
When he stepped outside, he stopped at a drinking fountain because he was parched, and discovered that one of his shoelaces had broken somewhere in the course of his evening’s misadventures, had stopped and bought a new one at a shoe store, also stopped and grabbed a hot dog because he was famished. It was somehow becoming harder and harder to think about hitchhikers, black vans and space-time anomalies in the midst of such normalcy.
Time was slipping through his fingers, but his exhausted mind was no longer keeping track. Part of him couldn’t believe he was wasting time like this, yet the rest of his mind was getting too tired to think up a plan. That, and there was a sense of impending danger building in the back of his mind, but couldn’t figure out what that danger could possibly be. How much of it was because he hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, and how much was just this place and recent events messing with his mind in some elusive way? Earlier, he had been so confident that John would turn up around here somewhere, but now he wasn’t so sure.
It had made sense. At the time. Now the thought crossed his mind that the experiment may have opened passages to other worlds besides this one. In light of this possibility, he resolved to go to the nearest customer service booth to see if he couldn’t summon John over the intercom.
If he couldn’t, then he would go back outside and explore some more.
As Shades neared the top level of the atrium, he noticed a man standing next to him, slung in a safety harness hanging outside the railing to fix some of the neon tubing. The repairman turned back to the task at hand, but appeared to be having trouble concentrating. To Shades, the man seemed nervous in spite of the safety harness. On one hand, Shades figured he’d also be pretty edgy hanging out like that, but on the other, there was something about this man’s anxiety that seemed to resonate with his own in some way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Even as Shades wondered what precisely had drawn his attention to this old man in the first place, he got an answer.
“Oh…” the repairman muttered, “I can’t do this anymore…” then turned to Shades even as he was about to snap back to his own business, looking at Shades as if he expected something nasty to happen at any second. His next words were quiet and shaky, so he could barely hear them. “Psst!… Come here, young man.”
“Yes…” Shades took a step toward him, and he felt like he just left his real self standing at the top of the escalator.
“There’s no time to explain, but you have to get out of here,” the repairman told him, looking resigned and desperate and crazy all at once. “Right now. It’s too late for me, and it might already be too late for you.”
“What are you saying?”
Something had been nagging at the back of Shades’ mind since he left Club Positronic, and the desperation in this man’s eyes gave him the disturbing impression that this guy somehow knew what it was.
“This place!” the man hissed. “This mall! If you don’t get out of here soon, you’ll be trapped here forever. Trust me, you don’t want that. Look at me!” and his fearful whisper held Shades’ eyes riveted. “I’ve been here for over ten years!”
“You’re seriously serious, aren’t you?” Not that Shades had to ask. At first glance, the repairman would have pegged the repairman for late thirties, perhaps pushing forty, but on closer inspection, the lines, the slump of his shoulders, especially the hollow, long-accepted terror in his eyes, made him look aged beyond his years. Increasingly certain his real self had long since stepped off the escalator and resumed his exploration, Shades reflexively checked his watch, though paying no heed at all to the time. “But how can that be?”
He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on-end as he watched the seconds climb.
“If I take the time to explain, it might be too late,” the repairman warned him hoarsely. Seeing Shades still rooted to the spot, he said, “Fine. Have you—”
In that seemingly endless moment, Shades watched as the repairman was cut off in mid question as thick sparks arced out from the power cables that were supposed to be shut off while he was fixing them. As Shades jumped back from the burst of pyrotechnics, the old man lost his grip, all in an eerie sort of slow-motion. In that split-second, Shades’ mind was just catching up with the fact that the man was wearing a safety harness in time for his relief to transmute into pure horror when, at the end of its reach, his very lifeline snapped. Petrified, Shades could not avert his eyes from the poor man as he teetered on his heels, looking almost like he was going to recover before he fell.
His delayed move to grab the repairman left Shades peering down as he descended through space in a windmill of arms and legs.
“Ruunnn… boooyyyy… rruuunnnnn!!”
The repairman’s words floated up to him as if in a dream, so certain was he that his real self had already found a customer service booth and John’s name would be coming up over the intercom any minute. It was those last words sinking in that jolted him back into himself, and he was able to jerk away from the railing at the last second. Before the man— whom he felt had somehow, in some way he didn’t fully understand, sacrificed his own life to warn him— hit the bottom with a sickening crunch.
Run, boy!… Those last words echoed ominously between his ears, even after that gut-wrenching impact as he looked blankly around. Saw curious, startled, shocked people peering down from all levels of the atrium. Most were pale, some looked faint, still others were making a valiant effort not to be sick. A few had clearly failed at this last.
“Hey you!” a voice shouted from behind him.
Farther down the hall, Shades spotted a man in a black Security uniform gazing through crowd that was gathering around the atrium. Another guard was coming up on the first at a fast clip. Under other circumstances, Shades would have stuck around to give his statement to the authorities, but the same inner voice that told him time was tickin’ away was also telling him that those guards were bad news.
Still, for one dangerous moment, he nearly froze up.
End Notes:
“Tomcat” was one of the main characters from The Crossfire Gang— a vigilante crimefighter, and another inside joke.
Author's Notes:
nowhere fast
“What happened?” the first guard asked the new arrival.
He was standing there in black slacks and t-shirt, the word SECURITY printed across the front in blocky white letters, hands braced against his knees, having just scrambled out of the food court to hear what the commotion was all about. It didn’t take Shades years of martial arts training to observe that this guy was just a little out of shape.
“Some guy… one of the… help… fell off the railing near…” The new guard choked and gasped several times, doubled over. Totally winded. While the first guard was a little stocky, this guy’s gut hung down over his belt. The word SECURITY looked stretched-out around the front of his shirt.
Shades’ diagnosis: too many donuts. Apparently, even in other worlds, some things never changed.
“I know that,” the first replied, then looked a little concerned, asking, “You okay, man?”
“Yeah… I’ll be… I’ll be alright…” the second huffed and puffed.
“Okay,” the first resumed, folding his arms in thought, “but what’re we gonna do about it?”
“Wasn’t that guy,” the second said, pointing at Shades, “just talking to him?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he must have pushed him,” the stout guard concluded. “They’re gonna want an explanation, and he’ll do just as good as the next…”
By now Shades was no longer paying any attention to the guards’ conversation, having left the scene of the accident at a brisk pace. As tired as he was, the timing of all that had all seemed just a little too coincidental for him. The events of the past minute or so, this whole “curse” business, which sounded just crazy enough to be real, had re-energized him.
When the guards called out to him, and then actually started in his direction, Shades started moving faster, breaking into an all-out dash in an attempt to use the crowd as cover. This whole situation was becoming so surreal to him, the certainty that his real self had perhaps already caught up with John, that he was fast believing that he was really dreaming, zonked on the couch at home with the TV still running. Obviously, the late-night flicks were showing a twisted film about hitchhikers, then some B horror movie— a really bad B horror movie, at that— about evil malls. That was it.
That, and nothing more.
As he ran, the absurd thought kept repeating in his head that all he had to do to end this ordeal was just wake up.
Shades raced up and down various halls and passages, checking every turn for an exit. The sheer scale and design of this building was so disorienting, confounding any attempt of finding his way back the way he had come. Having long since lost the guards, and having bigger problems to contend with, he had all but forgotten them.
Some watched him with curiosity, consternation, puzzlement, or even amusement, most affording him only a passing glance. A few, who saw the growing panic in his unshaded eyes, felt a chill trickle down their spines. One called out mockingly, “Run, Terrance! Run!” To Shades, it sounded like “Run, Boy! Run!” and he poured on more speed.
He could still see the mortal terror in that man’s eyes as he lost his grip, not just on the railing, but on his very existence.
Between his full day, his harrowing experience in the woods, all the long hours he had been on his feet, non-stop for over twenty hours, he knew he was pushing even his high energy to its limits. The snow had only finally melted off (and stayed melted off) for just over a month after a long winter, so he had only recently resumed his distance-training again. The Iron Man of Lakeside, he thought, trying to stifle the hysterical laugh seeking to escape him. He barely prevented himself from collapsing and continued his aimless flight.
“This is too much…” he panted.
After a while, Shades stopped running, having gone as far as he could. Frowned at his watch, knowing that if he had started out fresh, he could easily have gone a whole lot longer. In the twenty-odd minutes he had run, a time-frame that had utterly exhausted him in his current state, he hadn’t seen anything even resembling an exit.
Thinking of the repairman’s apparent resignation to his fate, Shades nearly collapsed where he stood. Feeling totally spent at the possible implications of that grim warning, figuring that fatigue alone would have been problem enough, he wondered if all his efforts, as Olympian as they may have felt, were all for naught. If he was perhaps doomed before he even started.
He stumbled, bumping into a life-size cardboard cut-out standing in front of some video store. Shades nearly fell over himself picking it back up, but he managed. Even as he turned away, he saw the words, the name of a movie he had never heard of, called Crossfire 3: Extreeeme Jake!!! in blocky, camouflage letters riddled with bullet-holes, out of the corner of his eye. Then he recognized one of the cast standing before him, a burly, machine-gun-toting commando-type who looked quite deranged, and wondered just how many Crossfire spin-offs existed in this world when he and Amy hadn’t even seen the first movie.
“Hey! There he is!”
Shades’ stupefied wonderment came to a crashing halt as he saw the guard and his portly partner come around the corner.
“Oy…” Shades sighed raggedly, nearly staggering as he took up his flight again. He almost decided to give up, but dug deep for a little more adrenaline, though he understood that he would collapse soon if he didn’t get a break, that he couldn’t keep this up much longer. “Not these guys again…”
“There he goes! There he goes!” the hefty one shouted, wondering what he had done to deserve having to do so much running today.
“Get back here!” the other ordered, knowing that he would have to listen to his partner’s bitching about his knees for a good couple days after this. Nothing for it but to treat him to lunch as appeasement later.
Normally, I’d be able to run circles around these pigs, Shades thought. But the past twelve hours had drained his reserves. This chase would be brief, and he would not be able to win it with speed or stamina— his usual trump cards— this time.
One of Master Al’s favorite sayings came to mind: Fight smarter, not harder.
As he scrambled around the corner, Shades snatched a box of gumballs from a candy stand in a stroke of inspiration, spilling them on the floor behind him. Paying heed to neither the cashier’s demands, nor the guards’ cursing they slipped and fell on their asses, he didn’t even look back. As he staggered around the next corner, he happened to turn to his left, seeing what appeared to be some kind of dance club. Bankshot, he read out of the corner of his eye. Loud music, flashing lights, and, most importantly, dozens of people on the dance floor.
In one last burst of speed, hoping he wasn’t too late, he ran full-out into the crowd. As he waited he did his best to pretend to dance on what little strength he had left. After a nerve-wracking wait, from behind the wall of dancers, he at last saw the beleaguered guards peer in for a moment, then continue on their errant way.
Hoping he wasn’t celebrating too soon, Shades allowed himself a sigh of relief as he stumbled over to one of the lounge tables near the edge of the floor. As he fell into a seat, he concluded that, if a lowly repairman knew as much as he did, surely others around here would be able to tell him more. Of course, it also occurred to him that clearly someone or something here didn’t want people to talk about it, that he would have to be careful who he spoke to.
In the midst of his frantic, weary strategizing, a man in a teal uniform sauntered over to his table. As he drew nearer, Shades saw his nametag read Boss DJ. Deep, dark skin, long black dreds, and warm brown eyes. In a decidedly Jamaican-sounding accent, he asked, “Welcome to Bankshot. Can I help you, mon?”
At first no words came as Shades tried to decide whether or not to say anything. Unfortunately, he was running out of clever ideas fast. What finally convinced him to try was the simple fact that he was getting a totally different vibe from this guy than from the guards, one he hoped he could trust. Resigning his fate to the unknown, he spoke.
“I think so…” Shades told him, trying to figure out how to work this with a brain that was as tired as his body. Most people seemed oblivious to the curse, so he didn’t want to say anything that could backfire on him. In the end, he settled for, “Do you mind if I talk to you in private?”
End Notes:
“Extreeeme Jake” Simoneau was Tomcat’s arch-enemy, who, much like the rest of this action-comedy cast, really wasn’t as funny as this one thought back in the day. As well as one last inside joke for the road.
Shades sat at a table in the corner, waiting. Not only did the man agree to meet him when he finished up with the next couple customers, but something in his manner he had found reassuring. As if, not only did he sense what Shades wanted to talk about, but that he had also been invited into this kind of conversation before. Just the term “Boss DJ” felt comforting, somehow. Still, after all he had been through, he couldn’t help but worry that he had made a mistake.
When DJ returned a couple minutes later, alone, it did much to allay Shades’ fears.
“Now tell me,” he asked, taking a seat across from the stranger who had asked to speak with him, “what is dis all about?”
“I… I don’t know exactly how to put this…” Shades told him, just as earnestly. In spite of everything he had seen, he could still think of no sane- or rational-sounding way to ask what he wanted to know. Yet, with every passing second, he felt more certain that this guy knew what he was talking about. Fresh out of bright ideas, he went for the direct approach. “Do you know anything about a curse around here?”
“Dere are rumors. Who wants to know?”
“I do,” Shades replied, taken aback by the question. Then he realized that he hadn’t even introduced himself yet. “Shades MacLean.”
“DJ Rashid,” he said, “but around here I’m da Boss DJ.” He looked around for a moment, as if, Shades got the impression, making sure they weren’t being overheard. “If you know as much as you already do, den you know you’re in big trouble.”
“So it’s true, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” DJ replied. With a look of sorrow, as if he already had some idea what might have happened, he asked, “So, how did you find out?”
“A repairman told me…” was as far as Shades got as he hung his head, sighing and shuddering.
“I see.” DJ paused for a moment, then said, “And you’ve already tried to escape.”
Not a question.
“Yeah,” Shades confirmed.
“Den you’re really in trouble,” DJ told him, “because I know no way out.”
“But… there was a way in…”
“I don’t undastand, either,” DJ admitted, shrugging shoulders that seemed to bear the weight of the world in that moment, “and I’ve been here for years.”
Again, Shades tried to crunch those numbers, but it just wouldn’t compute, it was still just so unreal to him.
“I’ve seen people come and go,” DJ continued, “but only dose who break da three taboos get trapped here. Most of dem end up working for da Management, and I don’t know what happens to all of dem.”
“I’m guessing it would be a bad idea to complain to the Management, then.”
“Like I said, I don’t know where dey go, but I neva see dem again. I don’t know what de Management does with dem, but dey don’t like people talking about it. Bad for business, ya know.”
“What did I do, DJ?”
“Da reason why some can come and go, and why some get trapped in dis nightmare, it took me a long time to figure it out,” DJ explained. “Dere are three things you have to do to get trapped in here, da three taboos: Don’t eat da food. Don’t drink da water. Don’t buy anything. You can get away with doing one or two of dese things, but do all three, and you’re done. Dere might also be a time limit, but I can’t be sure about dat. All I know for sure is dose three things.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
“I’m not with de establishment,” DJ told him. “I don’t know any more about what dis place is dan anyone else I’ve met, but I can give you some advice, mon. Take dis to heart:
“Don’t sign anything!
“Don’t take money from dem no matter what!
“Don’t let Security get you! No one dey’ve taken has ever been seen again.”
Shades sat there for a long moment, just thinking about how close he had come to falling into that last trap earlier. Finally, he asked, “Where the hell am I? How did I get here? One minute, I’m on my way home from work, being chased by hitchhikers… then that black van… then something happened, and suddenly there’s this weird mall out in the woods…”
DJ sat there for an equally long moment, then answered, “Dis could take a while.”
“In that case,” Shades said, realizing belatedly one possibility of his current setting; chilled, hungry, thirsty, and getting drowsier by the minute, “have you got anything to eat around here?”
“We have sandwiches.”
“Ah. Then I’d like a chicken sandwich, please. Plain.” Blinking away at the bleariness in his eyes, he added, “Do you guys have Jolt here? Double or Triple, by any chance?”
DJ cocked his head at Shades for a moment, then said, “Never heard of it. Besides, de Management doesn’t allow anyone to sell alcohol at de mall.”
“Oh, no, it’s an energy drink…” That one threw him off. “Um… do you have anything with lots of caffeine? Besides coffee, anyway?”
“Well, we have Cam’s Cola Jammers.”
“Yeah,” having no idea what the hell Cam’s Cola was, “that’ll work. Thanks, Deej.”
After DJ left, Shades sat there, trying not to slouch or let his eyes droop shut. In spite of his perilous situation, sitting down had nearly put him to sleep. He knew he would need some rest soon if his mind was going to function, but for now he needed to remain as awake and alert as possible.
He was starting to doze off in spite of himself by the time DJ returned. The thought of food, though, after some twelve hours without a meal, was enough to wake him up again as he tore into his sandwich. He wasn’t sure about this Jammers business, but it turned out to be the best-tasting cola he’d ever had. Either that, or perhaps thirst really was the best flavor.
Whichever was the case, the Jammer kept him awake while DJ gave an explanation of other dimensions not unlike the one a young man in another dimension would soon be receiving from a certain librarian. Some of it was surprisingly similar to ideas he had once read about that were largely passed off as mere conjecture. All those books he had read about the Unknown, and now he felt as if he had wandered into one of those tales.
I just took a wrong turn on the way home from work last night…
Though the mysterious drink had sugar and caffeine to spare, eating was perhaps a bad idea. He was able to take in most of DJ’s theories, as well as his repeated warnings about letting any of the servants of the Management get him, but later he would barely remember anything of the directions his host had scrawled on a napkin, directing him to a safe place to close his eyes.
Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day…
End Notes:
-early draft: 1995
-notebook draft: April 19 - June 04, 2004
-word-processed draft: March 01 - April 11, 2005
-additional revisions: September, 2008
The Flathead Experiment was also part of that peculiar spring where I made such unprecedented progress, narrative and dialogue flowing from my pen as if they had merely been waiting for me all that time, like old friends. Though it starts out as a bit of a detour, I chose to divide it into two parts, ending with where Shades is when he first meets Max. From here on out, the established plot threads will begin working their way back together.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.