Scavenger Hunt

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prelude

  1

  2

  3

  ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Interlude

  1

  2

  TWO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Interlude

  1

  2

  THREE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Interlude

  1

  2

  FOUR

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Interlude

  1

  2

  FIVE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Postlude

  1

  2

  3

  Author’s Note

  HOW TO GET YOUR FREE BOOK:

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Scavenger Hunt

  By

  Michaelbrent Collings

  Written Insomnia Press

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  DEDICATION

  To...

  Good people who strive to make the world better,

  for nothing but hope’s sake,

  And to Laura, FTAAE.

  Prelude

  1

  Life was perfect, and that was as it should be.

  Some people believed otherwise. Thaddeus “Tad to my friends” Sterling knew that, just as he knew that most if not all of the people who said that worked terrifically hard to make sure it was so. Consequence was a natural result of action, as sure as the sun revolved around the center of the Milky Way, the earth revolved around the sun, and the whole of the universe revolved around Sterling’s family.

  He watched them now, the smile often hinted at among friends and business associates rearing into full view as he watched his child and wife play.

  His wife was beautiful. There was little chance she would have been anything other, given who Tad was, and where he came from. But as beautiful as she was – she had been a runway model in Europe, turning away from that lucrative and glamorous position to take up the far more lucrative, glamorous position as Mrs. Thaddeus Sterling – the child Tad had given her far outshone her.

  Perhaps the universe doesn’t revolve around us. Maybe it’s just all turning to get a look at the beautiful child that has made us all orbit around and around, all of us just hoping to get a look, a smile.

  Some people would believe otherwise. Some people believed life was hard, and that it should be. They believed that family was a tenuous thing, and had to be clawed at like a loved one strapped to an anchor, falling below the surface. But some people – most people – were fools. Most people…

  Tad’s eyes, wide open as he watched his family with fully focused delight, now somehow managed to widen still more. His thoughts fell from their musings.

  The sun revolved around the center of the Milky Way. The earth revolved around the sun. The whole of creation orbited his family. And that meant the whole of creation saw as the center of that unit – the center of the perfection he had created – stumbled.

  The child was graceful. The child was like a dancer who spun not along terrestrial planes, but through the wind and the aether. The child did not stumble.

  Yet that was what Tad’s child did now. Stumbled.

  And then fell.

  Tad was up and running as it happened, launching off the rattan chair he had had brought so he could sit and watch his family. He was only a dozen yards away, but each running step toward his family somehow contrived to draw him away from them. Creation had orbited the three of them so long, but now it was spinning off its axis. The thread that had kept the universe close – and watching over them all – had somehow frayed.

  Tad had done nothing to deserve that. To deserve this. Yet it was happening. Cause and effect, action and reaction – they had all disappeared, and the laws of physics along with them, because how could fifty feet be taking so long to cross?

  He heard himself muttering, but could not hear what he said. It could have been a prayer, a curse. It could have been yesterday’s stock prices. He didn’t know for sure what he was saying, because as his child fell, his mind fell apart.

  He finally reached the thing that had fallen. The angel. Something was in his way. He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t focus on anything save the one thing.

  He pushed the blur that had blocked his path. Heard a high shout of surprise and terror and pain as the thing in his way went flying. He heard sobbing in the background.

  He gathered his child. The child of his loins, his mind, and his heart. The child that had danced through life, and made all of life a place of music.

  The child danced no more.

  The music went away, and all that remained was silence, and screaming, and the dance was replaced by nothing at all.

  Nothing. And then something…

  Rage.

  Tad looked up and screamed. He screamed so hard he felt his throat tear. Felt blood froth in the back of his mouth. He felt the pleasant baritone of his voice switch to a surly whisper. He felt the vocal cords tear themselves apart.

  His scream faded to a hiss. Then to nothing at all. No music, no dancing. No cause, no effect. No child, no family.

  Nothing but the rage.

  2

  FBI REPORT FILE FA2017R2

  Appendix A

  First interview with subject, night of incident, by Detectives Hernandez and Dehghani.

  ---

  HERNANDEZ: Come on. Please. We just want to –

  DEHGHANI: He hasn’t said a word in hours. He ain’t gonna talk. We should just toss him in a cell until –

  HERNANDEZ: Shut up, D.

  (addressing witness) My partner really wants to put you in a cage and throw away the key –

  DEHGHANI: Hernandez, go f –

  HERNANDEZ: – but I don’t want to do that. I want to find out what happened. We have a bunch of dead people; a bunch of dead, mangled people; and a few things that we think are people, but haven’t been able to scrape up quite enough to verify. Just tell us what happened. Is there anyone else out there? Anyone in danger?

  DEHGHANI: He ain’t gonna talk.

  HERNANDEZ: Look, we know you didn’t do it. Not all of it. We think there was someone behind this, but can’t pin down who it was. If you know, tell us his name, please.

  DEHGHANI: He could barely stand when we found him. He mighta fried a circuit or –

  WITNESS: (laughter)

  DEHGHANI: (addressing Hernandez) You ever see something like this?

  HERNANDEZ: (unintelligible)


  (addressing witness) What about Thaddeus Sterling? He was seen near where we found you -

  DEHGHANI: Not his usual stomping grounds –

  HERNANDEZ: And we know he’s missing.

  DEHGHANI: He one of the bodies?

  WITNESS: (laughter)

  Following completion of transcript, N.B., NOTE FROM DET. DEHGHANI, investigating officer:

  Please note in file that transcript reads “laughter.” Witness was not merely chuckling or laughing as at some joke. It was loud, hysterical laughter.

  PERSONAL NOTE: I have been an LAPD officer going on 22 years. I have never heard someone laugh like that. Because I can’t think of adequate words to describe it, I will refer anyone reading this transcript/file to the video record, and will add that the laughing was scary as hell.

  3

  FBI REPORT FILE FA2017R2

  Appendix B

  Reproduction of YouTube comments on pertinent videos – see Appendix AA for list of videos, both active and since archived, Appendix AB for list of videos no longer available, and report sections 18 through 20 in re actions taken to recover videos that disappeared during hours following incident.

  See also Appendix AC list of known commenters as matched to YouTube designations, and Appendix AD for list of YouTube designations belonging to persons still unknown.

  For list of known homicides attributable to YouTube commenters, please see report for File FA 2018R2.

  See also Appendix AD and files referred therein to list of Portobello Road videos, comments, and homicides. N.B.: Hard copies of the files must be relied upon, as all electronic files are subject to corruption by parties unknown. See Internal Report FA 2019R43.

  ---

  Comments to YouTube video designated A1

  ---

  4 COMMENTS - SORT BY

  Gamercity69humpty

  First!

  REPLY

  mYm0MMAHatezU

  First!

  REPLY

  InMorning83

  Was that real?

  REPLY

  MissingU4Evah

  WHAT THE HELL DID WE JUST SEE?!

  REPLY

  ONE

  1

  The first voice was a woman. The next belonged to a man.

  “Wake up, mister. Please, wake –”

  “Wake up!”

  “That’s not help –”

  “No shit it ain’t!”

  Clint did not hear what came next, if anything. He had been close to consciousness, but now that consciousness receded. It became a dream, and the dream pulled him to it and became his world.

  2

  The darkness is gone. Just for a moment.

  For a moment he is standing at the place he does not want to be, and at the place he must be.

  He looks down. The grass here is slightly weedy. Brown patches show among the green places – a water pipe burst three years ago, and since then the grass has been watered by hand, a chore which the gardener seems unwilling to do regularly. Or perhaps he is willing, but no one has paid him to do so.

  Other places here are green, evenly trimmed, impeccably maintained. Those are the places where the rich lay. Even a few feet away, the graves switch from cheap plaques set into the ground to full headstones and even an ornate crypt or two.

  The man stares down at his feet. Of all the markers set flush with the ground, this one is the cheapest. It was all he could have hoped to afford. More, in fact. He ate nothing but ramen noodles and rice for several weeks after he purchased it.

  It is nothing.

  It marks nothing.

  It hides nothing.

  But it is all he has of what was once his everything.

  The engraving on the marker is simple:

  CLAIRE – 1999-2007

  There should be a longer space represented by that simple hyphen. There should be many years; in fact, there should be no hyphen at all. She should be alive.

  A great many things should be. Few, in the man’s estimation, ever are.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you,” he murmurs.

  Then he looks up, and sees the blue sky swallowed in sudden darkness and has a single moment in which he realizes he is not here at all. He has not been here for hours, he suspects. He was here, then…

  What?

  He does not know the answer to his own question. And he has no time to ponder it, for he is not real. He is a dream, and the blue sky darkens and then the darkness reaches down and swallows everything: the grass, the stones, the marker, and – last of all – the man who is nothing but a dream.

  3

  The darkness he had awoken to was still there, but this time something felt different. Clint Walker could feel it. The cemetery was gone. He had been there, but was there no more. He would not return, either, until another year had passed. He would go back then, and look down, and be able to do nothing but mourn for what remained still lost.

  The darkness still held him, but he felt it thin and weaken. He surged toward it, reaching out ghost hands to peel it apart like a spiderweb – or a cocoon. A chrysalis from which he would emerge to find… what?

  More voices, first of all. One was that of the sweet-sounding young woman, another the gruff voice of the man who had spoken to her before Clint’s dream/memory took him away for a moment. Another was thick with accents Clint recognized from his youth: the voice of someone with little education, but a great deal of anger.

  He couldn’t hear what they were saying. Only the tones. Anger, confusion… fear.

  It was on the borrowed strength of this fear that Clint finally pushed out of the darkness.

  4

  He tried to sit up, felt like puking, sank back, then tried to sit up again. This time it was a little better. He still felt like vomiting all over the floor, but was able to choke it back and go from flat on his back to bent at an awkward forty-five degree angle, then sat up fully.

  He looked up.

  Looked ahead.

  Looked to his right.

  Even glanced down for a moment.

  The sight that greeted him was essentially the same in all these directions, and that was what drew the first words from his dry mouth: “Where…?”

  White. That was all he saw. White ceiling, white walls, white floor. All of them were obviously metal. The ceiling was corrugated, the waves reminding him of the shipping containers he’d seen on trains or at ports.

  No doors. No windows.

  One wall had a strange item beside it: a water cooler. The kind in any office or waiting room in the country. Just as white as the walls, with a single spigot in its center.

  The top held a five-gallon water jug. The word “SPARKLETTS” was written across it – a sight so mundane it was beyond jarring when compared to the rest of the room.

  Beside the cooler, five paper cups sat rims-down on the floor. Another odd sight, and one that drew the eye nearly as much as the final ornamentation.

  Nearly.

  The final thing was bolted directly to the wall. It was a wire mesh that reminded Clint a bit of some of the cages he had seen covering clocks and air conditioning controls in some of the places he had stayed as a kid. The metal cages provided access to anyone with the key, but kept mischievous – and sometimes straight-up malicious – fingers away.

  This one, though, had no keyhole that Clint could see. Just a set of bolts holding it fast to the wall.

  The metal looked sturdier than those other cages, too. There were gaps that allowed Clint to see what the mesh cage held, but the metal itself was thick and somehow forbidding – though not as forbidding as the thing that hung inside it.

  Clint had seen such things before: it was just an iPad. But for some reason this iPad seemed less like an innocuous bit of personal electronics than an open eye. The dark, huge pupil of a shark, staring through a hole in the wall. Something waiting a moment more before it came in and ate what it found inside.

  Clint realized abruptly that he had been laying – an
d now sat – on a hospital-style bed. A nice one, too. Nothing like any he’d ever been on himself. The ones he had found himself in on the one or two occasions he’d been so ill he had to go to the doctor were usually the cheap, ratty kind. Free clinics didn’t have a lot of dough to invest in comfy resting.

  All this Clint took in in a moment. That was something he had learned as a child: take in the details, figure out the goods and the bads whenever you land in a new place.

  Movement drew his attention. He had been aware he was not alone in this place, but now he focused on the others in here.

  One of the people in the room was pacing relentlessly back and forth. The entire room was only about thirty feet long from wall to wall, but the man was using every bit of it. He was black, darker even than Clint, only where Clint was about five-ten and a hundred-seventy pounds after a meal and before taking a crap, this guy was at least six-five and two-fifty. Tattoos writhed up his neck and onto his face, ending in a stylized “52” on each cheek. The tattoos were old, too; darkened with age to the point that they made his face look bruised. Like the tattoos represented something that had beaten him in over time.

  They probably had. Clint knew what that number meant: the man was now or had at one time been a member of the 52 Hoover Gangster Crips, a gang that operated out of South Los Angeles, not far from where Clint had spent a large chunk of his youth.

  Not many people got out of the gang, short of prison or feet-first into a coroner’s van. But this guy maybe had. Certainly active members of the Five-Deuce didn’t tend toward wearing suits. Light, worn weave that had turned shiny at the elbows and knees. A dark tie that hung low across the man’s neck, like a noose waiting to be drawn.