by R. L. King
He chuckled. “It’s not a hardship, believe me. And if you and Jason feel that you must do something, you can always take care of the chores ’round the house. I’m abysmal at housekeeping.”
“See?” Jason said, grinning. “He is gonna make you do his laundry.”
“You can do the laundry,” she protested. “I’ll mow the lawn or cook or something.” They were heading out now, and she looked back at Stone. “Are we going back to the Forgotten now?”
“Right you are. We’ll drop this stuff off at the house and be on our way. We’re not actually far from their new location.”
“Can we get some food first?” Jason asked. Despite the big breakfast they’d had only a few hours ago, his stomach was rumbling again.
“I wish we could take something to them too,” Verity said.
Stone nodded. “Both excellent ideas,” he agreed. “One more stop, then.”
When they arrived at the address Lamar had given them for the Forgotten’s new base, they found it to be an old auto-repair shop in the back of another of the area’s numerous abandoned industrial parks. It was built like a warehouse, but only about half as large. As they pulled around the back of the building, they immediately spotted the triangle-and-rays “good place” symbol chalked on the asphalt near the door. The door opened, framing Lamar and Marilee in the doorway. They both looked surprised as Stone, Jason, and Verity all got out of the van, each one bearing a large cardboard box. “What—?” he asked.
“Lunch is catered today,” Stone announced, handing his box to Lamar.
The old man looked inside, and his eyes widened. The box was filled with wrapped sandwiches from a local fast-food sub shop, the mingling scents of meats, vegetables, and condiments wafting up enticingly. “I—”
“Coming through,” Jason said. He carried another box full of two-liter bottles of soda along with plastic cups, forks, and napkins. Verity brought up the rear with a second box of sandwiches.
The inside of the building was one large, open space. About fifteen of the Forgotten were sitting around inside, but most got up and began to filter over when they smelled the food. “I don’t know what to say,” Lamar said. “Except—thank you. Your kindness is appreciated.”
“Think nothing of it,” Stone said. “We were going to pick up lunch before we came over here, and Verity quite rightly pointed out that you all might like to join us.”
Jason and Verity started setting out bottles and cups on the makeshift table the Forgotten had fashioned out of a door and two empty cardboard boxes, and soon everyone had grabbed a sandwich and a drink and had found a spot to eat. Stone sat down near the back wall with a small group consisting of Lamar, Marilee, Verity, Jason, and the gruff military man Hector.
Intent on eating, no one spoke for a while. But then Stone addressed Lamar. “Have you given any thought to what we discussed this morning?”
He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it all day,” he admitted. He looked troubled. “I’ve talked it over with Marilee and a couple of the others, and—we want to help. Some of our group are afraid, though.”
“I’d be surprised if they weren’t,” Stone said. “Whatever we decide to do, I doubt it’s going to be safe. But the risk to you and your group is minimal if we do this correctly. All I really need you to do is to help us figure out where the leading Evil of the area keeps itself. I need you to communicate with other Forgotten groups and try to figure out where its base is. Because if we do strike, it only makes sense to strike there.”
Lamar nodded. “That does make sense,” he agreed. “I warn you, though—such a thing will take time. We don’t encounter other groups that often. Of course, we have a few places where we can meet or leave messages for each other if we need to, but it’s not as simple as calling them on the phone or putting out the call for a group meeting. We’re not that organized, partially by necessity. Our groups are large enough for protection, but not big enough to attract the Evil’s attention.”
“Well,” Stone said, “if you can do the best you can, that’s all we can ask. I have some things I need to do in the meantime, to prepare. But all of this hinges on knowing where to look. We can be ready when we find out, but until we know—”
“I understand,” the old man said.
Stone pulled out a small notebook and jotted down the phone number at the new house. He tore off the page and handed it to Lamar along with some cash. “This is where you’ll find us,” he said. “Since we may not know where you’ve moved on any given day, it’s probably best if you contact us when you find out something—or if you need anything.”
“We can’t accept—” Lamar protested, trying to give back the money.
Stone shook his head. “As I said, what I’m asking you to do could be dangerous. The least I can do is try to help a bit so you don’t have to worry so much about your livelihood for the next few days. Don’t worry,” he added as Lamar still didn’t look convinced. “I’ve got a fair bit of money squirreled away, and it’s nice to have something helpful to spend it on.”
Lamar nodded. “All right, then. Thank you. We do appreciate everything that all of you have done for us.”
“That’s mutual, I assure you,” Stone said, patting his formerly wounded side for emphasis. “And if all goes according to plan, I’m hoping you’ll all be in better circumstances soon.”
Lamar looked philosophical. “I’m not going to think that far ahead, Dr. Stone. Around here, we pretty much take things one day at a time.” He stowed the phone number and the bills away in his coat. “But I promise you—as soon as we know anything, we’ll find a way to contact you.”
For the next several days they heard nothing from the Forgotten, and Jason and Verity were both starting to get restless. Jason had a serious problem with being confined anywhere for any length of time, and was going stir-crazy inside the house despite their daily trips out for food and general shopping, while Verity mentioned she was worried that something had happened to her friends. They kept busy by watching television and doing the chores around the house—Verity, it turned out, was a talented cook and enjoyed experimenting with different recipes, while Jason put his mechanical aptitude to work on various small projects both inside and outside, and spent every spare moment doing what he could to make the old Ford run better.
Meanwhile, Stone spent most of his time either holed up in his room doing research, or puttering around in the large family room which he had commandeered and was in the process of turning into a place to perform magical rituals. A couple times he called Verity in to help him with some mundane task, but mostly he kept to himself. “It’s a good thing I’ve a lot of practice doing this sort of thing,” he said at one point, annoyed. “Losing the better part of my research collection in the explosion is making things more difficult than they have to be.”
When he wasn’t doing research or filling the house with the smell of incense and burning candles while building the various magical devices to help him combat the Evil, Stone did take a bit of time out to begin explaining the way magic worked to Verity. It was the same lecture he’d given Jason, about the difference between black and white magic and how they operated. “You’ll need to know this stuff no matter who you decide to apprentice with,” he told her, “so I might as well give you a head start and not have you get it secondhand from your brother.”
Verity proved to be a quick study and very interested in the topic, asking many of the same questions Jason had asked. Toward the end of the week, when she wasn’t attempting to whip up some new exotic dish, she found excuses to spend more and more time in the family room, watching Stone do his thing and asking more questions.
One evening, as they sat around the dining table eating Verity’s latest experiment (lasagna—like most of them, it had turned out to be quite tasty, though a few of her failures had required herculean feats of diplomacy on Stone’s and Jason’s parts so as not to hurt her feelings), Stone said, “So, I think I’ve got all my items sorted, so now
it’s time to move to Phase 2 of our mad little plan.”
“And that is—?” Jason asked. “I thought we had to wait for Lamar and his people to get back to us before we can go further.”
“Not necessarily—there is something else we can do. Though we will likely have to hunt down the Forgotten to help us with this part, so I hope they’ve left us some way to contact them.”
“What do we need to do?” Verity asked.
“Find one of the Evil, so we can have you practice and see if you can control your power to drive it out of people without harming them.”
“You want to find somebody who’s possessed and experiment on them?” Jason looked dubious. “I still say that doesn’t sound safe. What if they can communicate to each other somehow, telepathically or something? That could bring them all down on us at once.”
“Well, I wasn’t proposing to do it here,” Stone said with a raised eyebrow. “And in any case, I don’t think that’s how they operate. Again, it’s a theory, so I could be wrong, but we’ve seen no indication yet that they’re in any sort of constant communication with each other—at least not when they’re possessing a body. I don’t think we’re dealing with a hive mind here.”
Jason was still looking apprehensive. “So you want to find somebody who’s possessed, lock him up somewhere, and let Verity play with him until she figures out how to kick the hitchhiker out of his body—and then what?”
“And then we need to figure out how to capture it,” Stone said, “and confine it.”
“Al, if you want a pet, why don’t you just ask Marilee if you can borrow her kitten?” Jason’s tone was light, but his nervousness was evident. “Seriously, you mentioned this before, but you didn’t seem like you had any ideas how to do it. Do you have any now?”
Stone shook his head. “Not really. Hence the experiment. Not only do we need to determine whether Verity can drive it out at will, but I also need to study it so I can construct some sort of magical prison capable of holding it long enough that it will either die or dissipate before it can locate a new host.”
“How do you think you’re gonna do that, though?” Jason asked.
“That’s where the study comes in. My working theory is that if I can do something similar to what I did to block Verity’s mind against the influence of whatever’s causing her mental issues—find the ‘magical frequency’ these things operate on when they’re noncorporeal—then I can create a magical containment field that will cancel out that frequency, and prevent it from seeking out another body to possess.”
“Theory,” Jason said. “That seems like a big stretch to me. If V can get the thing out of the guy we grab and you can’t hang on to it, what’s to stop it from flying off and phoning home?”
“Because the one we grab to experiment on will be one of the weak ones,” Stone reminded him. “And we’ll make sure to do it where there aren’t any other humans in the vicinity, so when it vacates the premises, as it were, it won’t have anywhere to go and will simply be destroyed.”
“And what makes you think that the little ones operate on the same frequency as the big ones?” Jason persisted.
“That’s why I keep you around, Jason,” Stone said with approval. “Because you ask all the good questions.” He glanced at Verity. “These are the kinds of questions you should be asking, by the way. Whomever you end up apprenticing with is going to expect you to keep your mind sharp at all times, and open to possibilities. Questioning and critical thinking are key to magic.”
“Uh…sorry,” she said. “I’ll do better next time.”
“See that you do,” he said, his smile and quirked eyebrow taking the edge off his words. Then he turned his attention back to Jason. “The answer to this particular question is: I have no idea. As I said, it’s a theory. In this case, I think it’s a pretty decent one, though. We’ve no reason to believe that the powerful ones and the weak ones aren’t the same ‘species,’ so it follows that they’d operate on the same magical frequency, albeit no doubt at different potency levels. So all I have to do, theoretically, is figure out what that is, and extrapolate from the housecat to build a cage that will hold the tiger.”
“I hope you’re right,” Jason said. “Because I’m not in any hurry at all to have that tiger come flying out of your little cage and decide to hitch a ride in one of us.” He paused to dish up another helping of lasagna. “You said we have to find the Forgotten for this part. How come?”
“Oh, and you were doing so well asking the good questions, too,” Stone said, chuckling. “Because unless you’ve developed some way of detecting the presence of people possessed by the Evil, we’re going to need someone who has one.”
“I get it,” Verity said. “You’re going to see if you can get one of their folks who are sensitive to the Evil to come around with you until they find somebody.”
“Exactly.”
“I see two big problems with that,” Jason said. “First thing, the only one of those I’ve seen is a girl who can barely function under normal circumstance, and who freaks out and goes all catatonic when the bad stuff is around. And second, what are you going to do: just drive around at random until she goes off? That could take weeks.”
“There’s more than one of them,” Verity told him. “I’ve heard of at least one other one—remember, Jason, I told you about him? The young boy?”
Jason thought back. “Oh, yeah. The canary. The one you said the guy finally showed up who could talk to him. I never saw him around, though.”
“He travels with a different group, but Lamar’s group could probably find him if they had to.”
Stone was sitting back thinking while the two of them discussed this. “As for your other problem,” he said when there was a pause, “No, I wasn’t planning to drive around randomly. We’ve established that these things are attracted to strong emotions, particularly negative ones, yes?”
Jason nodded. “Yeah. Everybody seems to agree on that.”
“Well, then, we need to locate someplace where they might find them in high concentration. Operating on the assumption that they would prefer to take the path of least resistance, if they could find a way to be in the vicinity of strong emotions without having to do anything themselves to cause them, then they can simply sit by and—”
“—get their emotional rocks off without risking getting arrested or discovered,” Jason finished.
“You’ve such a way with words, Jason,” Stone said with an amused sigh. “But essentially, yes.”
“So, we just need to come up with a place like that and go look there,” Verity said. “That doesn’t sound too hard.”
“It might be harder than you think,” Stone cautioned. “Because remember—the second part of this plan is that we have to be able to get hold of a test subject. That means that places like hospitals or prisons are right out: too much security. We’d never manage it, even using magic.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d really rather not show up at a DMW meeting or anything like that,” Jason said.
“No. That wouldn’t do at all. Let’s think for a moment: they prefer negative emotions. Fear, suffering, anger, despair, depression… what kinds of places do those occur in concentrated form?”
Verity shrugged. “Mental institution?”
“Uh—boxing match?” Jason offered. “Or some kind of underground fight?”
“Hmm…” Stone considered. “Might be too hard to get into a mental institution even if they had one around here, and underground fights don’t generally allow tourists.”
“Horror movie?” Verity suggested.
“Good thought, but horror movies are strange things: yes, there’s fear, but it’s usually more excitement than fear. Most people don’t go to horror movies against their will, so it’s assumed that they want to be scared. Same reason I don’t think an amusement park would work. That, and again it would be hard to get someone out of a theater and drag them out to the van without someone seeing them.”
; “Wait, I’ve got it!” Verity yelled suddenly, grinning.
Stone and Jason both looked at her, startled by her sudden outburst. “What?” Jason demanded.
Her eyes darted around the room until she spotted a newspaper on the kitchen counter. She hurried out, grabbed it, and brought it back out to the table. Shoving the serving dishes out of the way, she spread it out and turned a few pages, then stabbed a triumphant finger at one of the ads. “There!”
The two men stared at the place she was pointing. “Fear Asylum—the Scariest Haunted House in the Bay Area,” Jason read.
“Right!” she said, nodding. “I remember reading about these when I was in the halfway house—I wanted so much to go, but of course they never let us. Charles went once, though, and told me about it. He said it was plenty scary. They actually had people faint and have to leave because they couldn’t get through the whole thing. They do it every year around this time.”
“Oh, right,” Jason said. “They have one down in Oxnard, too. All the teenagers go there.” He looked at Stone. “You have no idea what we’re talking about, do you?”
“Not a bit,” Stone said. “Keep going, though—it sounds fascinating.”
“It’s at the fairgrounds,” Verity said, pointing at the ad. “They take over some of the exhibit buildings, and sometimes they build mazes outside, too.”
“And why is this any different from a horror movie?” Stone asked.
“Oh, trust me, it is,” Jason told him. “In a movie it’s all on screen. It can make you jump, but you know in the back of your mind that it can’t hurt you. These things are all based on that little fear everybody has: what if these aren’t all just employees who get paid to scare me? What if there’s a real axe murderer hiding in here somewhere?”
“Sounds like a pretty good hunting ground for the Evil,” Verity said. “I’ll bet some of them even had their hosts get jobs there, so they could get a steady diet of fear.”
