Alastair Stone Chronicles Box Set: Alastair Stone Chronicles, Books 1 through 4

by R. L. King

  “They hire a lot of teenagers and people my age,” Jason said, “and a lot of ’em don’t ask too many questions, you know?”

  “Excellent,” Stone said. “Sounds like just the sort of place we’re looking for. Now all we have to do is find Lamar’s group and see if we can convince Lissy—and perhaps a minder for her—to come along with us.”

  Jason cocked his head at the mage. “Uh—Al—just doing a reality check here. You do realize we’re basically talking about kidnapping, right?”

  Stone nodded. “Quite so. But given the stakes, I think it’s worth it to take the chance. We’ll have to be careful, of course, and find another location to do our experiments, but—” He looked at Jason. “You’re not backing out now, are you?”

  Jason shook his head. “No, no. Just making sure we all know what we’re getting into, is all.”

  “I’d say if you want to get down to it, what we’re really doing is stopping a kidnapping,” Stone pointed out. “Tell me—would you rather have yourself borrowed for a few hours’ worth of harmless and painless magical experiments, or have some sort of alien hitchhiker riding around in your brain?”

  “Well, when you put it that way…”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  As it turned out, it wasn’t hard at all to locate Lamar’s group. Stone, Jason, and Verity simply drove around the Mountain View area until they spotted likely looking groups of vagrants, then showed them the triangle-and-rays symbol and asked if they’d seen anyone matching the description. The first few gave them blank looks, but finally they found a group in Sunnyvale who immediately recognized the symbol and suggested that they look in the back quadrant of a mostly abandoned mall not far away. After that, it was a simple matter of going there and driving around until they spotted the symbol. They didn’t even have to find a way in: Hector was just coming outside for a smoke as they were getting out of the van, and he led them through a maze of maintenance corridors to a large, empty storeroom.

  It was only Lamar’s group now, which at some point seemed to have merged with Hector’s: Lamar himself, Marilee, Benny, Lissy, Frank the Scribbler, Hector, Susanna, and a couple others that Stone and Jason hadn’t met yet. Marilee’s cart was parked off to the side, and the kitten played among the bags.

  “Good to see you again,” Lamar said. “We didn’t try to contact you yet because we’re still working on getting the information you wanted. Things move slowly in our world, and some folks are nervous about getting involved.”

  “That’s all right,” Stone assured him. “We’re not quite ready for that step yet, so if it takes a while, that’s not an issue. We need to ask you something else, though.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Stone took him and Marilee off in a corner along with Jason and Verity, and together they explained their plan. Both of the Forgotten looked scared; Marilee glanced across at Lissy, who was, as usual, humming to herself with a vague, happy smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “Lissy is—vulnerable, as you’ve seen. And she can be hard to manage for anyone who doesn’t know her well. We take care of her here. She’d never make it on the streets on her own.”

  Stone nodded. “I wouldn’t even ask you to consider it if there were another option. You mentioned, Jason said, that there was another with a similar power—a young boy?”

  Marilee shook her head. “No, that’s Kody. He used to be with us for a while, but he’s moved on. He finally found someone who could communicate with him, and when he moved on, Kody went with him. We haven’t heard from either of them since they left.”

  “So, you don’t have anybody who can communicate with Lissy?” Jason asked.

  “Susanna can a little. She seems to have a calming effect on her, unless the Evil are very close. You saw how she gets—”

  “Would Susanna maybe come along too?” Verity asked. “This is really important, Lamar. And we won’t let anything happen to her. You know we wouldn’t.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jason spoke up. “Wasn’t Susanna the one who figured out the DMW was coming when you guys were at Melody’s house? Isn’t she the one who made you get out? Couldn’t she just come with us and do that?”

  “Sadly, no,” Lamar said. “Susanna’s ability is more general. She can detect the approach of danger—any danger, not just the Evil. And it’s very spotty.”

  “Plus,” Marilee added, “from what it sounds like, there wouldn’t be any danger for her to notice. If the Evil has some of their people working at this place to be near the fear, they wouldn’t need to do anything to cause it, other than what their job needs, right?”

  Stone nodded. “Very good point.” He sighed. “So we’re back to Lissy. If you have any other ideas, I’d be happy to hear them, but I’m fresh out at the moment.”

  “I’ll ask her,” Marilee said, still looking troubled. “I’ll ask her and Susanna if they’ll go with you.”

  After she’d gone, Stone turned back to Lamar. “We need one other thing as well—a place to do what we need to do. Preferably one that’s not far from this haunted house.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard,” Lamar said. “That isn’t the best area of San Jose—I’m sure there are abandoned buildings there. Let me talk with the others for a moment. I’m assuming you want to do this soon?”

  “As soon as possible, I think, yes.”

  Lamar left as well, and after about five minutes, Marilee and he returned together, with Lissy and Susanna trailing behind them. Susanna turned out to be the large, middle-aged woman in the multicolored sweater who had helped work on Stone when he was injured. Jason and Stone hadn’t gotten a close look at her before; she bore more than a passing stylistic resemblance to Willow from the hospital. Both were large, had frizzy hair, and had a certain earth-mother look to them. She didn’t look too pleased about the plans. “I’m not liking this at all,” she said. “Taking Lissy out among reg’lar people. She gets real nervous doing that.”

  “It won’t be for very long,” Stone assured her. “And we’ll make her safety—and yours—our top priority.”

  Lissy smiled a wide, vague smile and started humming a radio jingle under her breath.

  “Plus,” Susanna said, “I’ve seen these—these haunted house places. It’ll scare the stuffing out of the poor little thing.”

  “She might not even have to go inside,” Jason said. “Depends on how they’ve got it set up.”

  Susanna sighed. “I know there’s no helpin’ it. I know what you’re tryin’ to do, and if you can do it, then things will be better for all of us. But it just don’t seem right to—take advantage of her like this.”

  Lissy patted her hand. “Boo scary,” she said, making a ‘peek-a-boo’ gesture.

  “All right,” Susanna conceded with a sigh, putting her ample arm around Lissy’s thin shoulders. “If we’re going to do it, though, let’s get it over with.”

  Stone, Jason, and Verity came back the next night to implement their plan. They’d spent the rest of the day going over strategies, trying to anticipate contingencies or possible things that could go wrong. “You know you can’t do that, right?” Jason said as they got into the van. “No matter what kinds of things you plan for, something always happens that you didn’t expect. That’s the way these things work.”

  “There’s my good old optimist brother,” Verity said, grinning. But she too looked nervous.

  All three of them were dressed in dark, nondescript clothes that would blend in with the crowds of teens and twentysomethings that would be the attraction’s largest clientele.

  The Forgotten were waiting for them—not just Susanna and Lissy, but also Lamar, Marilee, and Hector were standing outside, hidden in the shadows. To the new arrivals’ relief, Susanna had exchanged her colorful sweater for a drab brown one. Lissy’s dress was covered with a shapeless dark coat, and she wore a jaunty knitted cap that actually, if you didn’t get too close to her, might make passersby think that she was a normal high school or college girl. It was only when they got to
o close and saw her eyes that they would realize otherwise.

  “Ready to go?” Stone asked.

  Lamar gave them the address of an abandoned gas station near the fairgrounds. “We won’t be able to join you there—it’s too far to travel in such a short time—but there shouldn’t be anyone else around either. There’s a Forgotten group over there, but you might not be able to find them. They know you’ll be there, though.”

  Stone thanked him, waited until everyone was in the van, and drove off. Next to him between the driver’s and passenger’s seat was a black leather shoulder bag containing some of the magical items he’d created; he also wore a couple of things he hadn’t had before: a ring with a blocky purple stone on his right hand, and an odd-looking amulet pinned to his shirt underneath his overcoat.

  Nobody spoke for a while as they drove. Stone had the radio on and Lissy entertained them by humming along to most of the songs and many of the jingles—though it was soon obvious that while she was responding to the music, the tunes she hummed were of her own devising, and had little resemblance to the ones actually playing.

  “What’s the deal with Lissy?” Jason asked at last. He was pleased to note—but of course didn’t say this—that both Lissy and Susanna appeared to have bathed recently and put on the closest they had to clean clothes. Aside from not making the van smelly, that also meant that they would be less likely to draw attention to the group.

  “She’s been with Hector’s crew a long time,” Susanna said. Lissy herself seemed oblivious that she was being talked about. “His group and ours only just joined up, after we lost a couple, but we’ve helped each other out a lot over that time. Nobody knows where she came from. We found her wanderin’ around downtown San Jose one day, pickin’ flowers in the park and dancin’ around to the music in her head. When she tried to dance out into traffic a couple of times, Hector dragged her back and took her to Marilee. She seemed to take a likin’ to the group, especially Marilee, and she’s been there ever since.”

  Jason nodded. “So you don’t know if she was—okay—before whatever happened?”

  “No, no way to know that,” Susanna said. “Hey, you mind if I smoke?” She’d already started fumbling in her shapeless handbag.

  “Erm—” Stone said, uncomfortable. “Rental van. No-smoking policy. Sorry.”

  “Damn.” She tossed the bag back on the seat in annoyance.

  They spotted their destination from a couple blocks away: it was one of the few parts of the area that was lit up. A large sign towered above the fairground’s box office area, proclaiming FEAR ASYLUM HAUNTED HOUSE with appropriately gory artwork, surrounded by flashing orange and purple lights. Loud and spooky classical music performed in heavy-metal style boomed out over the area, and a large knot of people were gathered around outside in a rough line waiting to buy tickets.

  As they drove by on the way to the parking lot, Jason scanned the group as best he could. He didn’t see any leather jackets with red and black logos on them, which was a good thing. Glancing back at Lissy, he noticed she was still humming to herself and didn’t seem at all agitated. To the contrary, she appeared to be taking in the whole scene with wide-eyed wonder.

  Nobody looked at them oddly as they waited in line to get tickets. Although most of the crowd was teenagers and young adults, there were a few families and older couples as well. The loud music made conversation difficult, so they just drifted along together until they got to the front of the line, Susanna keeping a tight hold on Lissy’s hand. She still wasn’t showing any signs of distress.

  Once they handed their tickets to the attendant and went inside, they found themselves standing in a large, open area full of milling people and little booths selling T-shirts, glow sticks, buttons, and other paraphernalia with the haunted house’s logo on them, along with snacks. On a whim, Jason bought everyone caramel popcorn balls, and a green glow stick for Lissy. She waved it around happily, her eyes shining. Susanna gave him an approving nod, though she still looked like she’d rather have a cigarette than a popcorn ball.

  When they’d entered, the attendant had given each of them a little map showing the locations of the various different areas of the show. The largest of these was the Fear Asylum, which, by the images that went with it, appeared to depict a horrific mental institution. Other secondary attractions included the Haunted Forest, the Church of the Damned, and the Circus of Terror.

  “Where do you want to start?” Jason muttered to Stone. “It could take us all night to go through all of these.”

  “Why don’t we wander around outside each of them a bit,” he said. “With any luck, if any of the Evil are here, Lissy can give us a general idea as to their location and save us having to take a trip through each of them.”

  Jason nodded, and the four of them began a slow circuit of the area. All but the Haunted Forest were inside exhibit buildings, while the Forest was set up in a large vacant area behind temporary fencing. They moved past the Fear Asylum and the Church of the Damned without any reaction from Lissy other than to continue happily waving her glow stick, but when they approached the Circus of Terror she began to move more slowly. Her eyes, big with excitement, grew fearful.

  “Wait,” whispered Susanna.

  The others stopped. “Is this it?” Stone asked. “In there?”

  “I think so,” she said. She had her arm around Lissy and was holding her close; the girl was clearly shaking now. “I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to get her in there.”

  Stone contemplated that for a moment. She was obviously right: Lissy was growing more disturbed by the minute. Instead of humming she was moaning; her glow stick fell out of her hand and landed in the dirt. Verity picked it up and brushed it off, looking worried.

  “Al,” Jason said. “How about this: Susanna, you can hide the two of you, right? You can make that work here?”

  Susanna nodded. “All I got to do is worry about keepin’ Lissy safe and it just works automatically. It’s prob’ly already workin’.”

  “Okay then—what if you stay here or maybe go sit somewhere away from here so she’s not so scared, while Al and V and I go in and look for the guy.”

  “But Jason, how are we going to find him without Lissy to show us?” Verity asked.

  Stone, however, had caught his line of reasoning and nodded. “Right,” he said. “We just go in there and look for someone who’s getting entirely too much—erm—personal pleasure from watching all these people being frightened.”

  “Yeah, exactly. It might take us a little while to find ’em, though. Will you guys be okay?”

  “We’ll be all right,” Susanna said. “It’ll give me a chance to have a smoke. Lemme have that back,” she said, pointing to the glow stick Verity held. “It’ll help keep her calmed down once we get away from here. We’ll go sit by the food stands.”

  “We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Stone said as Verity handed it over.

  As they once again approached the Circus of Terror, they noticed that the music had switched from heavy-metal classical to macabre minor-key calliope. The lurid painting on the outside of the building depicted a nightmarish clown with graying fangs and claws, blood dripping from his chalk-white face above a ripped clown suit in black, purple and gray polka dots. “Charming,” Stone commented.

  “I’ve always hated clowns,” Verity said, shivering. “I probably saw something like this when I was a baby.”

  The crowd here wasn’t as large as for the Fear Asylum, but they joined a little group of about fifteen people and moved past the attendant (dressed as a sinister ringmaster) into the darkness. The calliope music got louder as they moved in. The whole place smelled like sweat and sawdust and a hint of popcorn.

  Inside, the cavernous area had been broken up into a maze of twisty corridors by portable barriers that occasionally opened up on one side or the other to reveal a tableau. The barriers were painted black, while the tableaus themselves were garishly colored and lit by ubiquitous black lights.
>
  “Just like the one back home,” Jason said, bored. “This wouldn’t scare a Chihuahua.”

  It appeared he was wrong, though. As they approached the first tableau, which depicted some sort of horrific clown-related torture session, they noticed that more than one member of the crowd looked agitated. When one of the clowns, who’d been hiding in the back of the group behind one of the black barriers opposite the tableau, lunged out with a roar and brandished a realistic-looking chainsaw, several people screamed and leaped backward, then giggled nervously as the clown subsided back into his hiding place to await the next group. One young boy started to cry. Jason, under cover of the milling crowd trying to reassure the boy as they shuffled off toward the next tableau, peeked around the barrier at the clown. He was standing back there with a buddy, chainsaw leaned against a wall and both of them taking quick swigs from the beer cans they’d stashed. Jason quickly backed up and caught up with the rest of the group.

  The next tableau was a sinister magic act, where the tuxedo-clad magician was sawing a curvaceous woman in a slinky red dress in half as two more evil clowns cavorted around off to the sides. The magician kept up his patter, looking relaxed, but suddenly something went horribly wrong and the “blade” sliced through the woman’s torso. She screamed so loudly that there had to be a microphone hidden around her somewhere, while blood shot out in all directions and her “guts” came spilling out of her body. The magician, meanwhile, went into hysterics, screaming and running around while the clowns tried to catch him.

  “Wonder how long it takes her to stuff all that back in between groups,” Jason muttered to Stone and Verity. His sister grinned.

  Stone wasn’t listening, though. He was looking behind them—just in time to see another clown, this one wielding two large, bloody machetes, leap out and scream incoherently. He buried one of the machetes in the midsection of one of the straggling group members, who shrieked and fell to the sawdust-covered ground, writhing in agony and fountaining blood.