Double Threat

by F. Paul Wilson

  Juana’s expression softened. She pointed to a folded aluminum chair like her own, leaning against the trailer.

  “Sit. Please.”

  Daley unfolded the chair and eased into it. “You told me my life would change. What did you mean by that?”

  “Has it?”

  That wasn’t an answer, but …

  “Nothing major yet, but if this keeps up, it could be huge … and not for the better.”

  “Like what?”

  She saw herself in a straitjacket, but batted it away.

  “I keep hearing a voice.”

  Juana leaned forward, intent. “What does it say?”

  “Nothing. Nothing I can understand, anyway. And then last night I was seeing things … this naked guy.”

  “Naked?”

  “Yeah. Looked a little like a friend of mine. That’s why I need what’s left of that alaret.”

  Juana stared at her a moment, then rose to her feet. “You want your alaret? Wait here.”

  She entered her trailer and emerged later with a small glass jar.

  Handing it to Daley she said, “Here is what is left of your alaret.”

  Daley saw only gray powder inside. It looked like …

  “Ashes? You burned it?”

  “That is how we—my sisters and I—dispose of a dead alaret: the traditional way.”

  Daley resisted the urge to wing it at her head.

  “Tradition? Your people have a tradition about these cave slugs?”

  “My sisters and I do.” She gestured to the trailer. “We take turns here. The sign keeps people away from the cave—”

  “Not if they can’t see it!”

  “Perhaps it was down for a reason. Perhaps you were meant to meet an alaret.”

  “‘Meant to’?” Daley was out of the chair. “Oh, no, lady. What’s meant to happen is me going back to that cave and finding another one of those things and bringing it back to civilization where they can put it under a microscope and find out what the hell it is!”

  Juana shook her head. “You will find nothing. One doesn’t find an alaret—an alaret finds you. Remember: ‘Of a thousand struck down, nine hundred and ninety-nine will die.’”

  “How can you have any idea that’s true?”

  “Tradition says so. You didn’t die. Perhaps you were lucky. Or perhaps you are special. Perhaps you survived because you will serve a purpose.”

  Daley was turning to go, but that stopped her. “What sort of purpose?”

  A shrug. “Who is to say? Strange times are coming. The stars align in patterns not seen for ages. Something is brewing.”

  “Can you tell me anything useful? Anything?”

  “Our tradition says the alarets came from the stars and stayed, waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Until one was needed.”

  “Needed for what?”

  Another shrug. “Who is to say?”

  “Damn it, lady, you’re talking in circles!”

  Juana looked genuinely distressed. “I didn’t create these traditions. They’re ancient, and they aren’t handed down whole. They come in fragments. I can only know what has survived the centuries.”

  “And that’s all you’ve got for me?”

  Juana spread her hands. “I’m afraid so.”

  Shaking her head, Daley walked away. Stars aligning … “meant to be” … nothing was meant to be. Shit happened, and this time it had happened to her. And these ashes … what use were ashes? Who knew if they were really the alaret anyway? Could have been scooped from a campfire. She’d keep them anyway, in case of the unlikely possibility that somebody somewhere could extract something useful from them.

  She called over her shoulder, “Yeah, well, thanks for all your help.”

  “I want to help,” Juana said. “I do. I’m here to help and guide you whenever you need it.”

  She sounded so damn sincere.

  “Right.”

  (“… low…”)

  There it was again. Daley started walking faster.

  Juana called after her. “Where are you going?”

  “To check out that cave. If you won’t help me I’ll have to find someone who will—like a hospital where I can get a checkup from the neck up.”

  “But you’re not sick. When you hear the voice, listen to it.”

  Low? She was supposed to listen to low?

  Daley made it back to the car and stood by the rear hatch, staring up at the cave mouth. She did not want to go back in there.

  She grabbed her flashlight and trudged up the slope. Light from the rising sun angled into the cave but she doubted it would be enough. She hesitated at the mouth, but only for a second. If she waited too long, she’d lose her nerve.

  Pressing her hand over her head, she ducked inside and shone the flash beam on the ceiling: nothing but naked rock. Not a trace of lichen … or alaret. She leaner farther in—

  (“Hel … low…”)

  Daley yelped with surprise and jerked upright, smacking her head against the cave ceiling.

  “Damn!”

  (“Hel-lo?”)

  Still garbled but definitely a word now. She stumbled back down the slope to her car.

  (“Hello!”)

  “Oh, God!”

  (“It’s not God and I’m sorry I upset you.”)

  “No-no-no!”

  Speaking rapidly, the voice said, (“I was trying to break my existence to you slowly. You know, let you spot me across a crowded room, then move in closer and closer, let you get used to the sight of me, then introduce myself. But I wasn’t fully integrated into our nervous system so I botched it. I’ve spent the night working on integration. I think I’ve got it now.”)

  She reached the Subaru to find Mr. No-Shirt in the passenger seat. Calm, composed, like he was waiting for his order at a McDonald’s drive-thru. Except he was fucking naked.

  Daley was damned if she’d allow herself to scream again. But she wanted to. She didn’t want to wind up like Jodi Karensky.

  (“You don’t have schizophrenia.”)

  Has to be that alaret thing. It did something—

  (“Yes, it’s ‘that alaret thing’ doing this.”)

  What was happening to her mind? Why was it playing these tricks on her?

  (“Nothing’s wrong with your mind. You’re not crazy. And I’m not a schizophrenic hallucination. I thought you’d be more comfortable conversing with a person rather than a disembodied voice in your head, so I’m creating this image in your visual cortex and translating my thoughts into a voice in your auditory cortex.”)

  “Please stop,” she said as tears threatened. She didn’t know how to deal with this. “Please go away.”

  And he—it—did. Simply vanished.

  She needed help, big-time help, and she wasn’t going to find it here in the desert. She had to get back to LA.

  2

  The apparition reappeared in the passenger seat as Daley was passing the Palm Desert wind farms. But she stayed calm. It couldn’t hurt her. He—it—didn’t seem the least bit self-conscious about being naked. She had to admit he had a good body, and was pretty well hung—

  Wait-wait-wait! I’m thinking of him as real. He’s not.

  “You’re not real,” she said aloud, keeping her voice low as she made it a mantra. “You’re not real, you’re not real, you’re—”

  (“Well, this image you see isn’t real, but I, as an entity, am quite real.”)

  She remembered a poem from her childhood and began reciting it.

  “Last night I saw upon the stair

  A little man who wasn’t there

  He wasn’t there again today

  How I wish he’d go away…”

  (“Not going to happen, Stanka, so I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to me. You’ve got yourself a roommate. From now on, you and I will be sharing your body.”)

  Daley started to reply, then cut herself off. She would not talk to a hallucination. And then she
thought, why the hell not? Her brain was creating this apparition, right? So in a sense she’d be talking to herself. And she’d done that before. She’d see how far she could take this.

  “In other words, I’ve been invaded? I’m occupied territory?”

  (“‘Invaded’ is such a loaded term, Stanka, and not quite accurate. I’m not really taking anything from you except some of your privacy, and that shouldn’t really matter since the two of us will be so intimately associated.”)

  The fact that it was calling her Stanka was a bit concerning, since she thought of herself as Daley. Wouldn’t a figment of her mind call her “Daley”? But she’d keep playing the game.

  “And just what gives you the right to invade my mind—and my privacy?”

  (“Nothing gives me that right, but we have extenuating circumstances here. You see, yesterday I was a fuzzy cave slug with no intelligence to speak of—”)

  “For a slug you speak English pretty good.”

  (“It’s ‘pretty well.’ You know better.”)

  I’m correcting my own English?

  (“And besides,”) it went on, (“I speak no better and no worse than you do. I derive whatever knowledge and intelligence I have from you. I know only what you know. So if you don’t know something, neither do I. As an aside, although you have high intelligence, your knowledge base is quite lacking. Also, we need to work on building your vocabulary.”)

  “What?”

  Now I’m insulting myself?

  All right, maybe just stating a fact. She didn’t kid herself. She’d hated school and wasn’t a big reader.

  (“Your vocabulary is deficient in many areas, which puts limits on my ability to express myself. But to get back to your comment about ‘invading,’ that would be quite immoral.”)

  “Gotcha! You just said you were a cave slug before you invaded me. What would an ex-slug know about morality?”

  (“With the aid of your rational faculties I can reason now. And if I can reason, why can’t I arrive at a moral code? This is your body and I am here only because of blind instinct. I have the ability to take control—not without a struggle, of course—but it would be immoral to do so. Even if I wanted to, I cannot vacate your mind and body, so we’re stuck with each other, Stanka. Forever.”)

  Yesterday … in the trailer … hadn’t Juana said Daley would never be alone again?

  No freakin’ way.

  “I know you’re not real, and we’ll see how ‘stuck’ I am when the hospital runs some tests on me. And if you’re supposed to be part of me, you know damn well it’s not ‘Stanka,’ it’s ‘Daley.’”

  Why not? As Uncle Seamus liked to say: In for a dime, in for a dollar. If she had to listen to this figment, it might as well get her name right.

  (“‘Daley.’”) The image made a sour face. (“I don’t like it. Not feminine enough.”)

  “And ‘Stanka’ is better?”

  Another face, with increased sourness. (“You do have a point. I shall call you ‘Daley,’ as you wish. But what shall we call me?”)

  “You’re not going to be around long enough to need a name. Please go away. If I have to listen to you all the way back to LA, I’ll run us into a bridge abutment just to get some peace and quiet.”

  (“Oh, don’t do that. If you die, I die.”)

  “Then go!”

  (“I’m gone.”)

  And it vanished.

  At least she had some control over it. Or was that just another illusion?

  Her phone rang. The screen read Gram. She picked up—always for Gram.

  “Hey, Gram.”

  “Hello, dearie. Just calling to see how you’re doing. Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  “Sorry about that. Been busy.” Before Gram could ask, she added, “Car sales down in Coachella.”

  “Oh. How nice.”

  This old Irish lady wouldn’t approve of her granddaughter involving herself in grift.

  “And would you be stopping by any time soon? Your uncle and I miss you.”

  “I miss you guys too. I’ll be by within the week. I guarantee it.”

  As soon as she straightened out her head.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. See you soon, dearie.”

  “Love you, Gram.”

  “Love you right back.”

  Daley jumped as the apparition reappeared and said, (“I’m sensing a lot of love for this woman.”)

  Tons of love. She and Pa spirited her away from the Family after her mum died and gave her a loving home. So much so that she changed her last name to Gram and Pa’s. Gram became the most important person in Daley’s life. Still was.

  “None of your business—and I thought I banished you.”

  (“You did. I was just struck by the depth of feeling and—”)

  “Go! Go!”

  (“You don’t have to shout.”)

  It vanished again.

  Depth of feeling … Yeah, Gram and Pa had shown her what a normal life could be, but they hadn’t been able to erase the imprint the Family had left on her brain.

  And now she had something else on her brain.

  But not for long.

  3

  “Well, look who’s up early,” Rhys said as he stepped into the dining room.

  His mother might have been an early riser once, but for years now, with all the meds perking through her system, her morning arrival rarely coincided with the early breakfast he and Dad customarily shared. But here she was, up and about, indulging in her usual repast of coffee and vape smoke.

  He pecked her on the cheek. “What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion. Your father was up and down all night.”

  If she was annoyed, her tone didn’t reflect it. The antidepressants had flattened her affect, flattened her tone—as flat as the desert below. They hadn’t flattened her body, however. Mom had packed on the pounds in the ten years since she’d lost the baby who would have been Rhys’s sister, Aerona. She blamed the antidepressants for the weight, and was probably right.

  “Oh? Is he all right?”

  “Physically, yes. He came to bed at his usual hour, but then, before I knew it, he was up and rushing downstairs for something. Then he’d be back to toss and turn, then jump up and head downstairs again. This went on all night—up and down, up and down. I finally gave up altogether on the idea of sleep and got dressed.”

  “I wonder if…” Rhys stopped himself.

  Mom blew a vape cloud and said, “‘Wonder if’ what?”

  He’d started to say he wondered if Cadoc had seen him but bit it back. Doc Llewelyn had advised Rhys and his father not to mention her stillborn daughter for fear of tipping her into one of her downward spirals. Rhys had learned over the years never to mention her firstborn son for fear of setting off a tirade about never seeing him, never having even a simple meal with both her sons present.

  He spotted Maria coming out of the kitchen with Cadoc’s breakfast tray. She’d been the family cook for as long as Rhys could remember. Though gray-haired and wrinkled now, she used to be quite a beauty. He’d had a crush on her as a kid.

  “Excuse me,” he told his mother as he followed Maria down the hall to the rear of the living quarters.

  He stood back as she stopped before Cadoc’s door and slid the tray through the slot on the floor. He gave her a smile as she passed him on her way back to the kitchen.

  “Just some toast and coffee for me this morning, Maria.”

  She nodded and continued on her way.

  Rhys knocked on Cadoc’s door.

  “Hey, bro. Did you happen to see Dad last night?”

  “Ungh,” from the other side. A single grunt from Cadoc meant Yes.

  “I’m going to guess he was in and out of the library. Am I right?”

  “Ungh.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “Ungh.”

  “Okay, bro. Later.”

  You didn’t say See you later to Cadoc because nobody saw Cadoc. Mainly because Cadoc did
n’t want to be seen.

  So … Dad had been haunting the library. Rhys could think of only one reason: the mysterious “pairing” message from yesterday.

  Instead of returning to the kitchen he headed downstairs to the business level. He found his haggard-looking father in the library with the translation of the Scrolls scattered before him on a desk.

  “What’s up, Dad?”

  “Found it!” he said, slapping the papers.

  Researching the printed version made no sense, not after his father had spent years digitizing the translation.

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to use the computer? You’ve got search functions there. With the papers—”

  “You’d be one hundred percent right if the Scrolls had been one hundred percent digitized. But I left out certain sections that duplicated prior information or appeared to be digressions, and heavily encrypted other sections that are too sensitive to place at risk of hacking.”

  “Too sensitive?” Rhys had had no idea. “How so?”

  “You’ll learn when you reach your thirtieth.”

  “That’s only a year away—”

  “Fourteen months, to be exact. Right now, only one living being has read those sections. When you reach thirty, that number will double. But not until then.”

  “But—”

  “You’re not ready now and you might not even be ready then, but you’re my heir, after all. Leadership of the clan will fall to you. It is my duty to pass on the secret knowledge of the clan to the next generation.”

  … secret knowledge of the clan … It sounded so ominous, like it should have been accompanied by a sepulchral music cue.

  “But as I was saying, I left out certain sections of the Scrolls that appeared to be digressions. And for the most part, I chose correctly. But this ‘pairing’ event was not on my radar.”

  “You found references to the Duad, then?”

  “Actually Cadoc did.”

  “Cadoc? He helped you?” Rhys couldn’t help but feel a little hurt. “I would have—”

  “You were dead to the world in bed. Cadoc’s a night owl. He was out and about anyway. It gave him something to do.”

  True. Cadoc left his room only at night after everyone else had turned in. Moved through the dark with a flashlight. He couldn’t speak—his vocal cords were as disfigured as his body—but he had a sharp mind. Rhys knew that from their late-night chess games.