They're Back

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “A second option,” Sherri said, “is that he’s some sort of time traveler that used the trips by the Slots of Saturn to cover his tracks from Kronos.”

  “There are time travelers?” I asked, feeling stunned.

  Sherri nodded. “Mostly from the distant future, but Kronos and his teams keep them out of these times for just this reason.”

  I glanced at Stan and he was nodding.

  “If that’s the case, it’s out of our hands,” I said.

  Everyone around the table agreed. If that was the case, that was a problem for Kronos and Laverne.

  I looked at everyone. “Any more options, suggestions, or just flat wild theories?”

  “The first one seems the most logical,” Ben said.

  “But that seems like something that Kronos and the Bookkeeper would have taken into account,” I said. “All of these people will have talked to some people at one point or another.”

  “I agree,” Screamer said.

  “There’s something we’re missing,” I said.

  So once again we all sat there in silence.

  At that moment, Madge appeared from the diner with a tray of milkshakes. “I can hear all of you thinking clear downstairs,” she said, “so thought I would bring some thinking food.”

  She also had a couple of baskets of hot fries.

  I watched as Patty took one, then dropped it and sucked on her thumb.

  “Hot out of the fryer,” Madge said. “Sorry, should have warned you.”

  Something just dinged at me really hard.

  It was that poker sense of mine that dinged like a little alarm bell to tell me I was missing a detail that was right in front of me.

  Patty inspected her thumb for a moment, then put it against the cold glass of the vanilla milkshake in front of us.

  Again the little dinger in my head dinged again, like an annoying timer I needed to shut off but couldn’t find.

  Then it dawned on me what I was seeing.

  Patty’s thumb.

  Hitchhiker.

  Someone hadn’t been taken inside the slot machines, but had hitchhiked back in time on them.

  “Thank you, Madge,” I said, sucking on the milkshake so hard it gave me an ice cream headache. “You gave us the answer.”

  “I did?” she asked, looking puzzled and everyone else looked at me in the same way.

  “Patty,” I said, “show everyone your burnt thumb.”

  “It’s not really burnt,” she said.

  “Show them,” I said, smiling at her.

  She did.

  “Now, with your thumb sticking out, make a fist.”

  She did.

  “Of course,” Stan said, laughing. “Damn it, Poker Boy, how do you make these weird connections?”

  “What connections?” Screamer asked. “Missed me.”

  Patty was smiling at me and as she did, she stuck out her thumb again over the middle of the table, moving it from left to right as she said, “Going my way, mister?”

  “Hitchhiker?” Screamer asked.

  Sherri laughed and Ben just nodded.

  “We know who we got out of the machine,” I said.

  “Not who rode on the back of the machine into the past,” Stan said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “I know I never thought of looking around behind those machines.”

  “I didn’t either,” Patty said.

  “But we have one problem,” Stan said. “We don’t know exactly when he took that trip back. He wasn’t in any of the police reports of those rescued.”

  “So he went back with one of the first ones,” Patty said, “and when the machine jumped again, he got out of the warehouse.”

  I could feel my stomach tightening up again. Those machines had been operating for almost a week before we got to the warehouse. Hank could have found himself in that warehouse at any point over that week and we wouldn’t know when.

  Ben looked at me and said, “We have only ten hours to figure out when he arrived there and get him before he gets out of that warehouse. And then get the other eleven back to our time as well.”

  “If that is how he got back there,” Screamer said. “Remember, our first option is the most logical, that he met someone from the future and was influenced by them.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t feel right. The Bookkeeper would have spotted that. No, I think Hank rode along without meaning to. Not sure why I know that, but just a sense. Now we just have to figure out how.”

  And with that, again the silence filled the booth and my office overlooking the beautiful city of Las Vegas as the sun slowly set over the western hills.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Once More into the Nightmare

  “So how do we find out when he rode back on the machines?” Sherri asked.

  I looked at her and then asked the next logical question. “How could someone ride along and not be in the machine?”

  “Touching it from the back,” Screamer said.

  Beside me, Patty shook her head. “Slot machines in this modern time are almost impossible to get close to from the back, unless he was a maintenance worker or a slot tech. Sitting in one of the other chairs is the most logical thing to have happened.”

  I couldn’t believe I had forgotten that the machine was actually three slot machines.

  With three wooden chairs attached.

  It was only the machine on the right side that had come alive and had taken all our focus, but the other two machines rode along because it was a three-machine unit.

  “Of course,” I said. “We go back again, focus only on the moment the person from this time period was pulled into the machine to see if anyone was sitting next to them.”

  “And once we spot him,” Screamer said, “we’ll have a general timeline.”

  “I agree,” Ben said. “We can figure out exactly when the two people on either side from that time were pulled through. That should narrow the time down to a few hours.”

  “So we go back to the nightmare and inside the heads of the eleven people taken from this time.”

  Everyone nodded. But clearly none of them were any happier with the idea than I was.

  “I’ll tell Lady Luck what you are doing,” Stan said, and vanished.

  Screamer was still sitting in the middle, with Patty on one side and me on the other.

  “One more time?” I asked.

  “Do we have a choice?” Screamer asked.

  “Not that I can think of,” I said.

  “Then one more time.”

  Again, we scooted together in the booth and all touched so that our minds were all hooked up.

  I thought at everyone, Focus at the first person from our time and the moment they were at the machine.

  We did just that.

  And once again I was back in that warehouse, with the feeling of panic and fear crawling all over me like a nest of spiders. Sherri instantly calmed all of us down.

  Thanks, Patti thought.

  Again, with Sherri keeping us calm, I could actually think and get out of the panic I felt back ten years ago as we fought to save over a hundred people from those machines.

  We were again in slow motion as Patty had slowed time down, and we were back in our own memories. Then the woman from our time slowly appeared, being spit out by the machine like a bad coin, and Screamer pushed her out of the chair.

  Patty slowed the moment down even more so that we could see into the poor woman’s mind and see if there happened to be anyone around her that she noticed when she sat at the slots.

  No one.

  She was the only one in the chairs when the machine took her, and there was no way anyone could get in behind the old slots either, since they were against a wall.

  One down, I thought at everyone.

  We went through three more people from our time before we found what we were looking for.

  The man named Jeffrey Johns, number sixty-four in the list of people we had rescued from the machine. He had
just sat down in the chair when the machine was back at Binion’s in this time period.

  Suddenly, beside him, another man slid into the left seat.

  There was a clear thought of annoyance from Jeffrey because he had been thinking of playing all three slot machines at the same time. Then he was pulled into the machine and into the past.

  I got a clear image of the man who sat down in the left chair. Balding head, overweight, Bermuda shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt of loud blues and oranges.

  I have a hunch that’s him, I thought at everyone.

  We check all eleven, Ben thought clearly.

  I agreed.

  And we did, and that was the only hitchhiker we found from our time back into the past.

  Screamer cut the connection and we all moved back into our positions at the booth. Stan had returned and he and Madge were there, waiting for us to return from the nightmare of the past that we had been exploring in our minds.

  “We found him,” I said, smiling.

  Ben quickly looked through his notes. “He arrived in 2004 somewhere in an eight-hour-period of time.”

  “Great job,” Stan said. “Poker Boy, call the Bookkeeper and see if he can narrow the time down some. I’ll tell Lady Luck so she can work with Kronos.”

  Then he vanished.

  I grabbed my phone and quickly told the Bookkeeper what we had found and he said simply, “I’ll be back with you in twenty minutes.”

  “So how long did that take?” I asked.

  I was known for not wearing a watch or being able to keep track of time that well. Yet in this countdown, we had to keep track.

  “We have just under nine hours to stop the time loop from setting,” Ben said.

  My heart sank and I could feel what energy I had left sort of draining out of me. And as it did, it was as if I could suddenly hear a huge clock ticking.

  Just ticking in the distance.

  On and on and on.

  Slowly getting louder and taunting me with every tick of the clock.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Planning the Past

  Patty and I sat there sipping our vanilla milkshake. It had partially melted while we were on that last visit back into our shared nightmare, but it was still good. And neither of us cared. We were both just trying to get some energy for whatever came next.

  The fries were still just warm enough to eat, so we munched on a few of those as well.

  I could tell from Patty’s hand on mine that she had been drained by helping Sherri and slowing time even more when we were back in time.

  Suddenly, across from us, Sherri, who had been sitting, mostly staring at her milkshake, grabbed her head and bent over in pain.

  Screamer instantly had his arm around her and Patty leaned across the table and touched her as well.

  I couldn’t believe it. The damn slot machines were back again.

  I stared at the three of them, wishing I could do something to help.

  Stan just sat there staring as well. If a god was helpless, what could I expect to do?

  After a moment, Sherri opened her eyes and sat up. Patty leaned back next to me and through the touch in our shoulders I tried to feed her some energy.

  “Where are they?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “A rundown casino out on the old highway,” Patty said. “The Golden Jackpot Casino.”

  “We don’t have police on that one,” Stan said.

  Instantly he and I both jumped to the old casino.

  The energy of the evil slot machines pulsed over me like a wave of desire, working to draw me in with the promise of richness and fun, all for a nickel.

  An overweight, middle-aged woman, with dyed-brown hair piled far too high for even the 1960s, was headed for the deadly machine. She had on skin-tight green Capri pants that from the back should have had a warning sign attached that told a person to never look. She had a plastic bucket of coins tucked against her left breast and was about five steps from the machine.

  Another, even heavier and shorter middle-aged woman dressed in even tighter brown Capri pants was one step behind her.

  That was a sight I was never going to get out of my mind, and if it hadn’t been for the pulsing Slots of Saturn machines beyond them, I would have turned away.

  Stan and I both jumped again, appearing in front of the women.

  We acted like security guards, both holding our hands up for them to stop.

  Both women did stop, shocked expressions showing through the layers of makeup coating their faces.

  Before they could ask where we came from, Stan said. “These machines are broken.” His voice echoed through the casino like only a god can make a voice echo.

  “They look fine to me,” the first woman said, looking past us both. “I love old slot machines.”

  “Reminds her of her dearly-departed husband,” the other woman said, somehow smiling without cracking the layers of makeup.

  “He never had a crank like that one,” the first woman said, pointing to the long handle with the black nob on the side of the machine.

  Both of them laughed.

  I shuddered.

  “Yeah, you could wish,” the second woman said to her friend, and again they laughed.

  Behind me I could feel the intense pull of the machines, demanding that someone sit down and feed them.

  In front of me were two women who really did belong in the past, but a past far before 2004.

  “What can one pull hurt?” the first woman asked, giving Stan a smile that I swore should have broken a couple of layers of caked-on makeup. Her teeth were yellow from too many cigarettes.

  “More than you know,” Stan said.

  He waved his hands at the two women and they vanished.

  “Where did you send them?” I asked, looking around to make sure no one had gotten in behind us.

  “To the buffet, paid lunch,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s what they needed,” I said, shaking my head.

  We spread out a little and for the next three minutes we stood there, backs to the machines, telling people the slots were damaged, as the power of the slots drew people toward them.

  Finally, the machines started pulsing bright to dim and then back, more and more, faster and faster, until finally with a flash they jumped back to the warehouse in the past.

  They had left empty.

  Around us the old casino went on, an occasional bell going off, an occasional yell from a drunk at one of the gaming tables. Without the pulsing energy of the old slot machines, the casino suddenly felt worn and tired. And it smelled of old cigarettes and spilled whiskey on the worn blue carpet.

  “Lucky we had Sherri to tell us the slots were here again,” I said.

  He nodded. “But while you are in the past, she needs to stay here to keep watch.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  We both jumped back to my office where Sherri looked like she was just recovering from the jolt of the machine’s last jump.

  And Patty looked even more tired than before.

  I just hoped that at some point this would be over and Patty could rest.

  Not that I worried about her or anything.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Plan

  We knew that the other eleven people from the future all came back out of the slot machine in just over an hour period as we rescued everyone. We knew that time exactly.

  And we knew who they were and what they looked like, so we could intercept them on the way out of the warehouse to the police that we had stationed outside that first time.

  But Hank had arrived in a window that the Bookkeeper could only knock down to four hours.

  Four hours to find him and get him back, a couple hours to get everyone else back.

  Six hours.

  We had eight hours until the time loop locked in and trapped us forever. And not even Kronos, the God of Time, could save us.

  That was cutting it very close.

  Too close for my tas
tes.

  Laverne appeared and nodded to Stan, then to her daughter, then to me as she sat down. She was now dressed in casual clothes. Jeans and a tan sweatshirt that said, “Believe It” on the front.

  “Great job stopping yet another one,” she said.

  “Sherri knew where it came in,” I said. “Stan and I just stood guard.”

  Laverne nodded. “Good team work. So, who is going back with me to stop this madness?”

  I looked around at my team and sighed. I had given this a little thought and I knew I was right. But both Patty and Screamer were not going to like it.

  “I think you and Ben and I should go back,” I said to Laverne. It felt weird giving Lady Luck instructions, but she had asked after all.

  One of her dark eyebrows actually went up at that suggestion, telling me it wasn’t what she expected.

  Both Screamer and Patty started to object and I held up my hand and they stopped.

  “We need to keep Sherri here in case the machines come back. Screamer, you and Patty need to be here to help her through that. In the time we’re gone, the slots might come back more than once.”

  Sherri didn’t like the sound of that, but she nodded.

  I turned to my boss. “Stan, you need to be here to jump to stop anyone else from getting sent back if the machines do come back again.”

  Stan nodded.

  “That’s critical,” Laverne said, “because we don’t have time to figure all this again.”

  Screamer nodded and so did Sherri.

  I looked at Ben and he smiled.

  “Ben knows exactly what each person looks like,” I said, “so we’re not trusting my memory completely. And he knows which casino they came from in this time, and when, so they can be transported to that same spot close to the time they left. That way they will never be reported missing.”

  Lady Luck smiled, but Patty didn’t look happy.

  “I’ll work with my friend Johnny in the past,” I said. “He was the local cop friend that helped us. He can help me pull out the right ones and keep them from going outside to the police. We’ll jump them out from back in the shadows of the warehouse.”