Twisted Fate

by Simon Rose

  Frustratingly there were no further details although the story closely corresponded with everything Max’s dad had told him. Yet it didn’t match what Max had seen in the terrifying vision he’d experienced when he’d been at Jeff’s house. Max went back to the search results page and was about to check his email but something caught his attention. At the bottom of the search results page there was a website called SecretConspiracyXpose. Curious, Max clicked on the link, which connected to a website devoted to a wide range of conspiracy theories.

  He rarely looked at such things, except when following links to amusing stories posted by his friends on social media. He’d also sometimes read about obvious hoaxes that were posted online as a joke, merely out of curiosity. Max was familiar with many of the more common conspiracy theories that were often talked about on different websites. The SecretConspiracyXpose site was mostly about secret government operations and the supposedly unsolved crimes related to them. There were a number of different links to a variety of pages on the website. Many of the pages either featured old information that had been around for decades or the headline simply didn’t grab Max’s attention. He was puzzled why this site would even come up in the search that he’d conducted for the archived news report of his mother’s death. Max then saw a familiar name on the page─Aleksander Kovac.

  Max clicked on the link and shivered as he immediately recognized Kovac’s photograph. The page contained some details that Max already knew but also referred to events that had happened after he’d changed things in the role of David Dexter twenty years earlier. It mentioned Kovac’s links to government programs run by the military and listed Jonathan Dexter as one of the government department heads that had at one time been part of the operation Kovac had been running. If Max didn’t know any better, he’d consider the claims made by the website owner to simply be wild speculations, yet Max knew that they were all true. The site had information regarding Kovac’s time in Europe and his early career before he left war-torn Yugoslavia and travelled to North America. Whoever controlled the site had clearly done extensive research. The indication seemed to be that Kovac had defected to the West or had been helped to escape by American intelligence agents. None of this surprised Max although it was interesting to see the details.

  The page also discussed missing persons cases and how some members of the police department, which Max assumed meant John Carrington, had been suspicious but were always blocked by the government when they asked questions. The website even mentioned rumours of experiments on people although it didn’t refer to them as psychics, only that men and women were kidnapped at random and taken to secret facilities. Although it was covered up at the time, the website owner claimed that there had been a major police investigation focused on the former waterfront area that had shut down the secret operation. Jonathan Dexter had resigned from the government soon afterward but Kovac, his fellow scientists, and anyone else that worked with him were never prosecuted. There was no mention of Kane or even any unnamed individuals that might be him.

  Max would normally have dismissed SecretConspiracyXpose as yet another crazy conspiracy theory website if he didn’t know that the information it contained was genuine. And yet if this secret operation had been shut down why were details of it still online? There was usually another story attached to these types of websites, where someone claimed that clandestine activities were still going on or where people had supposedly made shocking confessions when interviewed before their deaths. Max had seen plenty of web pages featuring reports of individuals that believed they’d seen aliens, had crucial missing evidence about assassinations, claimed they’d seen secret government documents, or knew the truth behind a notorious story or criminal case. Max still didn’t know why this particular website would have cropped up in the search results when he was looking into the news story about his mother’s death. There didn’t seem to be any obvious connection between Jonathan Dexter or Kovac and an incident at a local train station.

  There was another page on the website related to Kovac’s operation but before Max could investigate further his laptop unexpectedly shut down. Max cursed under his breath. He still wasn’t used to the new computer and had forgot to charge the battery. He looked around the room but couldn’t see the laptop’s power cord anywhere. He checked under the papers and other items on the desk, followed by each of the desk drawers. He then stood up and went over to the three-drawer dresser. Max moved aside the tangled collection of game system cables and wires beside the small TV on top of the dresser. He then went through each of the dresser drawers but still couldn’t locate the charger. It wasn’t on any of the bookshelves either. Finally, he found it, along with the TV remote, under some comic books, loose game discs, and empty cases on the floor beside the bedside table.

  Max plugged the charger into the wall outlet. He attached the cord to the laptop but then heard the front door of the condo open. His dad was back. The last thing Max wanted was another conversion about his mom. He was determined to learn more on his own. He darted over to the switch on the wall and quickly put out the light. Hopefully his dad would think he’d gone to bed early and not bother him. Once his dad came upstairs and was asleep, Max had every intention of getting up and doing some more research, but fell asleep in his clothes on the bed.

  Chapter Five

  The Outsider

  THE NEXT MORNING Max awoke with a start when the alarm on his phone sounded, still wearing his clothes from the night before. He’d slept soundly and had no further weird dreams or disturbing visions. He even dared to hope for a second that the unsettling experiences might be all over but strongly suspected that wasn’t the case.

  Hoping to leave the house before his dad woke up, Max got ready for school quietly. Once he’d got dressed he went to the desk to grab his laptop. He went to unplug the power cord and immediately realized that in his haste before falling asleep he hadn’t plugged the cord all the way in. He opened the laptop and pressed the power button but there was nothing. The laptop wasn’t charged at all and there wasn’t enough time to do it before he went to school. Max cursed under his breath then sighed as he plugged in the cord. The computer would have to charge while he was out at school for the day.

  Max went downstairs and into the kitchen. He grabbed a muffin from the fridge, drank some juice directly from the carton, and headed out the door to school. It was a beautiful morning so he didn’t mind the walk and didn’t really care if he arrived early at school that day either. Max ate the muffin on his way through the neighbourhood and it wasn’t long before he reached the small strip mall near the school. Many of the students usually frequented the mall’s pizza shop or the nearby convenience store at lunchtimes, when the storeowners did very good business. Max met a few people that he knew as he got closer to the school and chatted with them as he completed his journey.

  The school had originally been built in the 1920s but several changes had been made to the building since then. The school had periodically been expanded at different times in order to accommodate more students. The additions and improvements were all intended to be practical but were often completed in incompatible architectural styles. The school’s main facade was built of grey stone and retained much of its original character. The attached square or rectangular wings that had been added over the decades were constructed of brick or concrete, including the huge ugly block that served as the school’s parking garage.

  Max was only about twenty minutes earlier than usual when he walked up the steps to the school’s main door. There were a few students sitting and talking in the common area across from the main office, but most people were getting ready for the start of the school day. Max headed down the long hallway to his locker, passing the framed photographs of former principals, school founders, and historic sports teams. He walked by the entrance to the short corridor that led down to the basement cafeteria, greeting a couple of his friends as they walked by in the opposite direction. Max turned the corner and stopped a
t his locker, located beside scores of others in a variety of colours close to one of the school’s gymnasiums. As Max opened the locker and pulled out the binder that he needed for his first class, he felt as if someone was watching him and thought he heard someone call his name. However, when he looked around there were only other students in the hallway heading to the classrooms and there was no one that he recognized. Max thought no more about it, closed his locker, and headed to the classroom.

  HE DIDN’T SEE Jeff or Jason that morning and couldn’t focus in class. Fortunately, his teachers didn’t seem to notice and left Max alone. He finally saw Jeff and Jason when the classes broke for lunch. He saw them both in the hallway standing beside their lockers.

  “Hey, Max,” said Jeff. “How’s it going?”

  “Good. I got a great night’s sleep and I felt a lot better this morning. I even got here early.”

  “Wow, Max,” said Jason. “Are you finally starting to like school?”

  He playfully punched Max in the upper arm.

  “Come on,” Jeff added. “We’re going to the pizza place. You coming?”

  “Actually, I need to do some stuff in the library,” replied Max.

  “I told you, Jeff,” said Jason. “He’s starting to like school. We should start calling you Professor Max.”

  Max laughed.

  “I’m really behind on that English project and I need to use one of the school computers.”

  “Where’s your new laptop?” asked Jeff.

  “At home. I forgot to charge it again.”

  “When are you going to stop doing that?” Jason asked, grinning. “Even my little sister remembers to charge the computer battery every now and again.”

  “Oh well,” said Jeff. “I guess we’ll see you later.”

  Max watched them walk along the hallway before closing his locker and heading to the library.

  HE’D HARDLY EVER been to the library at lunchtime during his entire time at the school and was surprised by how busy it was. Max had no idea what everyone got up to in the library at lunchtime. Perhaps they were supposed to be studying for school projects or catching up on homework. He didn’t recognize any of the other students and there was no one from his grade or classes, or at least nobody that he knew. Max smiled to himself since most of his friends weren’t that academic unless they really had to be, such as when exam time came around.

  He found a vacant computer in a reasonably secluded corner of the library and sat down in the chair. Max was determined to find out more about the conspiracy theory website but didn’t really want anyone to see what he was doing. Once the computer was ready and he’d entered his password, he typed “SecretConspiracyXpose” into the search box and quickly opened the main page. Scrolling down he opened the additional page that described Kovac’s operation. He then skimmed over the preliminary details, including the biography and photograph of Kovac, and went to the second page. Max recognized the photographs of Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Evans, Kovac’s assistants at the waterfront lab. He quickly read their biographical details. Lawrence had retired just after the incident at the waterfront and died five years later. Evans had disappeared for a few years then worked on a few projects in the private sector but her current whereabouts were unknown.

  Max saw a long list of names and accompanying photographs of men and women, all with biographical information added beneath them. Some of the entries had more detail than others but all featured dates of birth and death, alleged mental health issues, as well as speculation about the person’s potential psychic abilities. Apparently, the website owner was implying that all these people had been experimented on by Kovac and were now dead. Max skimmed over the details while occasionally looking around the library to make sure that no one was watching him, but the other students were all engrossed in their own work. As he continued studying the images, Max gasped when he saw a photograph of his mother. It was identical to the one that stood on the shelf above the fireplace at home. Max had no idea why his mother’s photograph would be on the website. He wondered if this was why SecretConspiracyXpose had shown up in the search results during his initial query about the news story. He scanned his mother’s biographical details, which he quickly confirmed were accurate and even mentioned his dad and himself, although not by name. There was even a cause of death stated, which was officially described as a suicide at a train station.

  “That’s your mom, isn’t it?” said a voice behind him.

  Max whirled around in his chair. Standing there was Julia Woodman, commonly known around the school as Mad Julia. She was wearing ripped jeans, a battered leather motorcycle jacket, and a tee shirt displaying the logo of an obscure metal band. Her thick and long jet-black hair was shiny and almost covered half her face. Max could only see one of her brilliant green eyes.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said that’s your mom, isn’t it?” she said, pushing back her hair.

  Max noticed that Julia’s ears were both pierced with multiple objects.

  “Yes, it is. How do you know that?”

  “I’ve seen her with you.”

  “What?”

  “I see ghosts sometimes,” Julia replied. “I’ve seen her near you here at the school once or twice. I see a lot of peoples’ dead relatives, but not all the time.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Max.

  He tried to sound utterly unimpressed. Although Max knew all too well that ghosts existed, he wasn’t about to tell Julia that.

  “What’s that site you’re looking at anyway?” Julia asked. “Oh, it’s SecretConspiracyXpose. That’s one of the better ones, and it’s all true what they say on there, you know. All the other sites have the same or similar stories but his pages have stuff that no one else has. Are you interested in that kind of thing?”

  “Not really, no,” Max replied. “Do you know this site?”

  “Yeah, I know all about it. I follow lots of those kinds of stories. There are all sorts of things out there that we don’t know the truth about.”

  Max noticed that some of the students had glanced over at him and Julia while they were talking. Max didn’t recognize anyone else in the library but just about everybody in the school knew about Mad Julia. The last thing Max needed was for people to think that he and Julia were friendly with each other. She was in some of his classes but Max didn’t know much about her, except that Julia seemed to have few friends and was considered to be somewhat eccentric, to put it mildly.

  “I found the site by accident,” he said.

  “Really? That seems a bit unlikely.”

  Max hurriedly shut the site down and logged out of the computer.

  “Yeah. I was looking for something else and just happened to find it.”

  “And found a picture of your mom on there too. That’s quite an interesting accident.”

  “Yeah, well, it happens,” Max replied, impatiently, as he stood up. “Anyway, I’d better go. My friends are waiting.”

  “Bye,” said Julia, with a shrug.

  Max didn’t reply and hurried out of the library.

  MAX STRUGGLED TO maintain focus during his afternoon classes. He was too preoccupied with what he’d seen on the website and with his short conversation with Julia. He hardly even noticed when the school day ended and was the last person to leave the classroom. He’d briefly chatted to Jeff and Jason separately in between classes in the hallways that afternoon but tried to avoid them at the end of the day. Max was pretty sure that they’d suggest going to Jeff’s after school and Max was in no mood for gaming or even just hanging out. He simply wanted to leave and get home as soon as possible.

  When Max was putting some items into his locker he looked up and saw a young woman with light brown shoulder-length hair wearing a blue dress standing at the far end of the hallway. He couldn’t make out her features but assumed that she was just a teacher that he hadn’t seen before. The woman then began walking toward him although no one else in the hallway seemed to acknowl
edge her presence. As she drew closer, Max gasped when he thought he recognized her face. The woman abruptly turned into the hallway to her right. Max quickly closed his locker, snapped the lock shut, and hurried to the corner, almost colliding with some students. When he got there, the woman was nowhere to be seen. The hallway had no classrooms or doorways and there was no way the woman could have got away so quickly. An icy shiver ran down Max’s spine as he realized that he might just have seen his mother.

  He slipped out of a side door of the school to avoid meeting his friends and hurried home. Max tried to remain calm but he’d been extremely unnerved by his experience in the hallway, despite seeing David’s ghost in the summer. As soon as he got home Max went to the kitchen and put his phone on the counter. He then opened the fridge, grabbed the juice carton, and almost drained the contents in three gulps. He leaned against the kitchen counter, breathing heavily. What exactly had happened at school? Combined with all these strange dreams was it possible that his mother was trying to contact him? This was the way that things had started with David. Yet could these incidents also simply be the result of Max’s heightened sense of awareness about the paranormal? Deanna had hinted at similar things when they’d ended their adventure in the summer. Max was certainly very sensitive to psychic phenomena following his experiences but wondered if he could merely be imagining that? David had eventually appeared to him in person on the bus. Was his mother going to do the same, and would he even be ready for something like that? Max finished the juice then was startled and dropped the carton when his phone vibrated. It was a text from his dad.

  Running late order pizza if you like

  OK Max quickly texted back and immediately got a reply.