by P. T. Hylton
Some of the things Colt said on his porch last week stuck with Sean, nagging at him like a bit of popcorn in his teeth. The Zed Heads were planning something, and it was going to be a lot bigger than a brick through a windshield. The chief might be content to look the other way, but Sean knew that was the wrong move. If they didn’t stay on top of this thing, filling out incident reports would be the least of the chief’s worries.
Sean clicked on his Maglite and entered the Beyond Academy. Most of the Zed Heads had gone to school here, and it had popped into Sean’s mind this morning that they could be using this place as a sort of clubhouse.
The hallways were long, dark things that seemed to stretch for miles. No one had bothered to clean out this building, and remnants of the Zed era that had been scrubbed from the rest of the town remained in place here. Sean passed under a banner hanging from the ceiling that read, Trust is a Must.
He took his time, searching each classroom for signs it had been recently used. They all wore coats of dust, like blankets. Most of them looked like they had been abandoned mid-session. Words like RESPY and Regulation were still written on dry erase boards.
Sean paused at the door to the auditorium. Somehow he knew this was it. If the Zed Heads were congregating at the school, this is where it would be. He opened one of the double doors and stepped inside.
He almost fell down the steps leading toward the center of the room. He’d only been here once before, and he’d forgotten about the stadium seating. He shined his flashlight toward the front of the room and saw a white board had been rolled to the center of the stage. It stood next to a podium. He saw a something written on the board in crooked handwriting.
He squinted at the board as he approached. What he saw sent a chill up his spine.
It was a list of names.
Trevor Hinkle. Will Osmond. Ty Hansen. Christine Osmond. Gus Hansen. Frank Hinkle.
The last name on the list was crossed out: Timothy Rodgers.
What was this? Some kind of hit list? A tally of those who hadn’t been faithful to Zed? A list of those who had helped bring him down? If that last theory was true, why was Rodgers’ name there?
Sean climbed the steps to the podium, willing the dry erase board to tell him something more. Would the chief even care when Sean showed him this? Would he take any action at all? Sean wasn’t sure. The man was in full-on job retention mode these days.
He saw a notebook on the podium. He picked it up and flipped through it. The handwriting was tiny and slanted. Probably written by the same hand that scrawled the list on the board. He’d need to get in some better lighting to read this mess.
He took one last look around, confirming there was nothing else of interest here. He snapped a quick picture of the whiteboard with his cell phone, though he wasn’t confident it would turn out in the dark auditorium. He scooped up the notebook and headed for the door.
He made his way to his car, and he had his hand on the door handle when something caught his eye. The old, gnarly tree next to the car. Something was carved into the bark of the tree, staring him right in the face.
He reached for his radio. This would definitely get the chief’s attention.
The words carved into the tree could be a joke, a clue, or a strange coincidence. He read the four simple words one more time.
Don’t trust them Sophie.
IN THE WOODS (PART THREE)
“Zed?” Frank asked. “He’s here in these woods?”
Mason nodded. “It’s hard to tell exactly where. He wanders. But he’s around here somewhere.”
Frank stared at Mason in the dim light of his flashlight. If this man had really been raised by Zed, who knew what had been done to his mind? For all Frank knew, it could be twisted beyond repair.
Frank thought back to his last meeting with Zed on the roof of city hall. If Zed knew, or even suspected, that Frank would come after him, what would his move be? Would he try to kill Frank? Try to use Frank to find a way back to Rook Mountain? As usual with Zed, Frank had no idea.
“Mason, does Zed ever talk about me?”
Mason chuckled. “Of course. He talks about how bravely you fought against the Unfeathered. And how you protected the town when he had to go away that time. And how you even found your way back from the Away. Which, according to him, had never been done.”
Frank grunted. “Did he say anything else?”
Mason shrugged. “He said you two didn’t always see eye to eye. He told me about how you stood up to him on the roof of city hall and helped send him here. But, from what I can tell, he has nothing but respect for you.”
“Huh. Well, just so you know, the feeling isn’t mutual.”
Mason chuckled again. “He said you weren’t friends. Not like he was with my father.”
Frank let that one slide. He didn’t want to push things too far. Mason was practically raised by Zed, from the sound of it, and he’d only just met Frank.
Frank had come here to find Jake, but Jake was long dead. He’d come to make sure Zed couldn’t return to Rook Mountain, but now it seemed he was the one who wouldn’t be able to return.
He surveyed Jake’s dilapidated old house. “Did your dad build this? Or did he find it here?”
“He found it.”
“Jake never was much of a builder.”
“He was a finder though.” Mason’s eyes lit up as he spoke. “He used to do this thing where he’d choose someone in Sanctuary, a different person each week, and he’d let them pick an object. Anything at all. As long as it wasn’t large enough to cause a spacing problem here. They could pick anything they wanted, and he’d bring it here.”
“What do you mean he’d bring it here? How’d he get it?”
“He had this book he used.” Mason trotted through the open door and into the house. Frank followed. “He’d go in his office. It was right over here. He’d shut the door. A few minutes later he’d come out of the office with whatever the person had requested. Sometimes it was a nice bottle of wine or a nice article of clothing. Sometimes it was something more exotic. We had a painting by Da Vinci once. I guess that was a big deal.”
Frank felt a dull ache in his chest. Not only had Jake not needed to be saved, he’d spent his time playing some mystical version of ‘pull the rabbit out of the hat’. Why hadn’t Frank stayed in Rook Mountain? He could have built a life for himself. He had friends there. He had family.
Instead, he was standing in the ruins of an old house in the middle of the night with a crazy person.
Frank shuffled over to where Mason stood and looked into the room that had once been Jake’s office. An old desk stood in the middle of the room. He shined his flashlight on a box sitting on the desk. “What’s that?”
Mason paused. “Sorry, what’s what?”
“That box.”
The older man paused longer this time. He shined his flashlight beam around the entire area. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Maybe Mason’s eyes were getting old. Frank guessed the woods didn’t come equipped with a vision plan. From the look of Mason’s teeth, he certainly didn’t have dental.
He brushed the dirt off the old lockbox. Most of the paint was gone, but there were still flecks of rusty red clinging to the metal. The box looked like the one Jake had as a boy. He’d eventually upgraded and handed the older one down to his kid brother. Frank had spent many hours with that box. It had served as baseball card storage, piggy bank, Matchbox car garage, and tackle box. Seeing this one sent the memories flooding back into Frank’s mind. Racing toy cars down the sloped driveway with Jake. Fishing with their father. Fighting with Jake over their favorite lures. He felt the beginnings of a lump in his throat.
He saw something dangling from the front of the box, and he understood why Mason hadn’t been able to see it. It was one of Frank’s original designs. The Cassandra lock. In fact, it looked exactly like the one in Frank’s pocket. He paused, wondering how Jake had gotten the Cassandra lock in wherever-the-hell
they were.
There was something else. Frank’s locks could be used to hide things from people, at least that’s how it worked back in Rook Mountain. Why would Jake want to hide the box from his own son?
Frank turned back to Mason, holding the box in the air. “You really can’t see this?”
Mason shook his head, his faced scrunched in confusion.
Frank rapped on the box with his knuckles, and the box gave out a ringing clang. Mason jumped back a little.
Frank performed a quick twist on the Cassandra lock, squeezed it, pulled at just the right angle, and it popped open. Mason gasped.
“You see it now, I take it?”
Mason reached a shaky hand forward and brushed his fingertips against the box. “I’ve been out here hundreds of times. Thousands, probably. How have I never seen this?”
“It didn’t want to be seen.” Frank unhooked the latches and lifted the lid. It opened with a high-pitched squeak. Frank shined the flashlight inside. The first thing he saw was a picture of Jake, Christine, and Trevor. Trevor was a baby in the picture. Frank had the same one hanging on the wall of his cabin back home. He had before he went to prison, anyway.
Frank moved the picture aside and saw another photo, this one of the previous generation of Hinkles: Jake, Frank, and their mom and dad.
There were other items in the box. An old pocket knife. Some guitar picks from a band Jake played in during college. Under all of that, there was a book. The symbol on the cover was partially obscured, and Frank almost gasped when he saw it. He moved the pictures aside. It wasn’t a broken clock symbol as he had first thought. The crack was exactly the same, but the image under the crack was different. It was a circle with roughly shaped continents sketched inside it. Instead of a broken clock this was a broken world.
Mason craned his neck to see what Frank was looking it. Frank quickly shuffled the pictures to cover the book.
“What’s in it?” Mason asked.
“Old pictures,” Frank said. “It’s Jake’s old family. From Rook Mountain.”
Mason was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I think I’d like to see those.”
Frank nodded. “Look, he probably didn’t want to make you feel bad. I’m sure that’s why he hid them.”
“Yeah, no big deal. You can show me at the cabin. We better start heading back if we’re gonna make it before sunrise.”
Frank blinked in confusion. The walk here had only taken fifteen minutes, and they’d left at sundown. “What do you mean?”
“My parents told me about your world,” Mason said. “The way things are always in the same place. It’s not like that here. Things change. They move. I know my cabin was close by when we left, but it might be all the way across the woods by now. Could be a five or six-hour walk. We wouldn’t be able to find it at all if it weren’t for this thing.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a round object. He held it up for Frank to see. Frank pointed his flashlight at it and saw it was a compass. Then Mason flipped it, showing Frank the backside of the thing.
It was the broken clock symbol.
Mason smiled. “It’s more than what it looks like, I’ll tell you that. All I have to do is think about where I want to go. The cabin. The stream. Whatever. I click the little drawing of the cracked clock on the back, and the needle on the compass points me in the right direction.”
Frank stared at the object. Though it seemed hard to believe, just earlier today in Will and Christine’s house he had destroyed those objects with the broken clock symbol. Now, here was another one, and he didn’t exactly have access to Christine’s knife.
“Does Zed know you have this?”
Mason chuckled. “Of course. He’s the one who showed me how to use it when I was a kid. I wouldn’t have survived out here more than a few days otherwise.”
Frank tried to wrap his mind around the idea of Zed as a kindly mentor figure, showing the boy how to use this Tool like other men might teach a kid to fish. Why hadn’t Zed taken the compass for himself?
“Where’d you get it?”
“You remember the woman I told you about? The one who came to Sanctuary and ruined everything? I pried this compass from her dead hand.”
CHAPTER FOUR: THE PULSE
1. Sanctuary
Jake walked through the forest, a cold beer in his hand. He wouldn’t open it until he got to the tree.
It was the dead of night, the time when he was least likely to be disturbed by Larvae. He’d made sure no patrols would be walking this path tonight. He needed to be alone. Alone with the tree.
A few minutes later he reached the tall tree with the trunk so twisted it looked like it was spinning toward the sky, and he leaned his back against it, cracked open his beer, and saluted the upper branches with the can, same as he did every week. “Here’s to ya, you gnarly old bastard.” He took a long drink and remembered better times.
He closed his eyes for a long moment and enjoyed the sounds of the forest. The buzz of the crickets. The rustle of a light wind through the trees. In the distance, the chatter of a fast-moving stream.
He needed this. Leading the Sanctuary, being the boss, took its toll on him. He’d only wanted to save people’s lives. He hadn’t realized at the time that he was also signing up to take care of them forever. To give structure to their lives. To help settle their petty squabbles. And, worst of all, to provide for them. He had the endless job of bringing over food, clothing, furniture, and all sorts of other necessities for every resident of Sanctuary. And it was getting more difficult. At first, the book had been fun to use—each new page it revealed to him was a new toy to play with—but it was growing more difficult over time. First, the book had revealed its secrets to him, and now it seemed to be using him up. Bringing over the weekly food supply tired him and the bigger jobs drained him completely. Sometimes he felt like Frodo carrying the ring to Mordor.
At the same time, he was grateful to the book, and not just for the food and clothes and supplies it allowed him to bring here. He was grateful to it for giving him the tree he was leaning against.
He knew he would eventually have to teach someone else to use the book. He should have done so already. If he suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack, they would all be in trouble. He’d considered teaching Logan. Or Nate. Or Mason, now that he was old enough to read but still young enough to be teachable. But each of those candidates had their drawbacks.
As much as he had come to dread using the book, he knew it had a hold on him. Deep down, he liked the power it gave him. He was the sole provider for this place. They needed him and he provided for them.
Jake turned and stepped back so he was facing the tree. “So…how was your week? Another seven days buried in the dirt. Hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.”
He sighed. Having your worst enemy be a tree was great from a practical perspective, but it did make the banter less fun.
“I know I always say it, but I hope you’re comfortable. You’re going to be here a long, long time. See, I’m getting out of here. We all are. I can’t tell them that, not yet. But I’m getting closer to finding the answer every day.”
Jake could read almost ninety percent of the book now. Every little bit revealed was another step in the right direction. Currently, he could pull objects through the book, but not send anything back in the other direction. Which meant there was no way home. But he was confident that if he stuck to his plan this would not always be the case. And these trees were the answer.
“I’ll be back in Rook Mountain and you’ll still be cooling your heels here in the dirt,” he continued. “Until one day hundreds of years from now when a tree disease, or a lighting strike, or the weight of your own branches brings you down. And then you’ll decay into nothing but a home for insects and small animals. How you feel about that?”
The tree didn’t respond, and every time that happened, every time he asked the tree a question he knew it couldn’t answer, it made him smile. Chi
ldish maybe, but there it was.
Jake finished the beer. It would be morning soon. He needed to go back.
He gave the tree trunk a pat. “Good talk. I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, don’t go anywhere.”
2. Rook Mountain
Sean sat in his car with Wendy Caulfield, parked a block away from the Post Office.
“This place is special to Zed,” Wendy said. “This is where you first saw him, right? Weren’t you there when he was arrested?”
Sean nodded. “Yeah. He was naked and confused. And he had that pocket watch of his clutched in his hand.”
“Do you think he brought the pocket watch with him or found it here?”
Sean shook his head. “I don’t know. But he was holding it in a death grip. He wouldn’t let it go for anything.”
Wendy shook her head. “Remember what he said when you first approached him? You told me years ago at that party at Jake and Christine’s.”
“Yeah. He said, ‘this will do nicely’. I thought it was weird even then. He was looking around like he was surprised by his surroundings.”
“Exactly. And remember the stilted way he talked at first? It was so formal. He was even like that when I first started to hear him speak in the parks.”
“He really reinvented himself,” Sean said.
“He got better every time I heard him speak. It was like...he was learning. Like he didn’t know how a person was supposed to act or something. Like he was adapting to his environment.”
Sean and Wendy had been dating for over a month now. After the Tools were destroyed and they had no reason to keep their distance from each other, Sean noticed the feelings creeping up. It was like a wall between them suddenly came down. As far as Sean was concerned, Wendy was the hottest girl in town. When he got up the courage to ask her out, he quickly found out she thought he was pretty hot, too.
