by R. L. King
“You actually care about killing them?”
“Of course we do. Not the Evil, of course. If I could kill every last one of those things by saying the word, I’d do it in an instant. But the people they possess—they’re just people like you or me. Maybe they’ve made some bad choices in their lives, but that doesn’t give us the right to pass final judgment on them.”
Jason nodded. He supposed that was right. He’d never been a religious man, but his instincts were to protect people, not to kill them. Even homicidal gang members deserved trials, or society would degenerate even further than it already had.
Again, Lamar patted his arm. “Go find your sister, Jason. Get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I should do that. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Lamar moved off back toward the fire, and Jason went in search of Verity. By now most of the Forgotten were asleep, huddled around the two fires or wrapped in heavy old blankets. He thought he spotted Frank the Scribbler a distance away, but he didn’t head over to check.
“Hey, Jason—over here.” He looked up and saw Verity still sitting leaned against the same tree where he’d left her. Hurrying over, he sat down across from her. “Is your friend okay?”
“Yeah. He’ll be fine. I’m just glad you guys had somebody who could help him.”
Verity nodded. “Lamar hasn’t been here long, but everybody respects him. He’s kind of the leader of our little group, and sometimes he helps out settling disputes when other groups get together. These guys squabble a lot when everybody gets their different kind of crazy going at once. You ever watch somebody with germophobic OCD trying to deal with somebody who never takes a bath, even when they get the chance?”
In spite of himself, Jason chuckled.
“I feel bad for some of them. There’s this one little boy about nine who never says a word—he just sits and rocks and goes along wherever somebody leads him. He mutters to himself in some kind of weird, gibberish language, and seems to get really agitated when the Evil’s nearby. They use him kind of like a canary in a coal mine, but up until a day or two ago nobody could talk to him. Then this other guy showed up and seemed to hit it off with the kid right away. He couldn’t figure out why nobody else could understand what he was saying.”
“Wow,” Jason said, shaking his head. “This is all just so—overwhelming. A few days ago I was back home playing poker and getting in bar fights, and now look at me. My crazy sister’s a magic bum, my new friend is a mage who moonlights as a college professor and travels by teleport gateway, I’ve seen more people get killed than I have during the whole rest of my life, and I’ve found out some weird spirit things from Dimension X are out to take us all over and make us miserable so they can get their jollies.” He shrugged, flashing her a lopsided grin. “What’s next? Talking cats? We’re all just living in somebody’s fishbowl? I wake up to find out this was all the world’s most elaborate dream?”
Verity chuckled. “Don’t call us ‘magic bums,’ Jason. That’s not cool.”
“Sorry. Just—realizing how freaked out I really am, and how much I’ve had to keep hold of it so I don’t just start running around like I’m as crazy as some of these folks are.”
“Think of how I feel,” she reminded him. “Meeting Susanna—having her be able to block whatever it is that was causing me to have problems—it was like coming up from being underwater. I know you don’t know it or realize it, but there were lots of times during the last few years when I was perfectly okay. It was weird—it was like waking up from a dream, having no idea where I was or what I was doing, and knowing that there was nothing I could do to prevent it happening again. You know how hard that is? It got better toward the end—I’m glad, or I never would have gotten out of that place alive. I hope you’re not mad at me for all those times I yelled and screamed. I hope Dad wasn’t.”
“You know…Dad’s gone, right?” Jason asked gently.
She nodded, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “Yeah, I know. They told me once, during one of my lucid periods.” She looked up at him. “Jason, what will you do now?”
The question startled him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, tomorrow you’re gonna wake up, and your friend’s gonna wake up, and there’s no reason at all why you need to stay here. You have lives, jobs, things to do. You’re not crazy—and you won’t go crazy if you get away from the people keeping you sane. So what will you do?”
For a long time he didn’t answer. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I don’t know what I can do. I don’t want to leave you here, but it sounds like you don’t want to go.”
“I can’t go,” she said. “I want to go home with you—or maybe just get a place around here and start having a normal life. But until we figure out why I’m like I am, I can’t do it.” She sighed. “I like these people a lot, but—I can’t help feeling like I’ve given up one prison for another one, you know?”
Jason nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. I’ll think about it—see if I can come up with anything. Or maybe Al can. He’s good with that kind of thing. I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
“How did you meet him, anyway?” she asked. “You two don’t exactly seem like you run in the same circles.”
He wondered if he should tell her, or if it would just make things more complicated. But as usual, he knew the answer. “V…he…he knew Mom.”
“What?” Her eyes went wide. “How could he—”
“Long story. I’ll tell you the whole thing later. Short version is that he was investigating some of these weird disappearances, and he recognized your name as one of ’em. We ended up at the same place, and he got me out of a jam. That’s why he agreed to help me. To help us,” he added, nodding toward her.
“This I gotta hear,” she agreed. “But you’re right—tomorrow, unless you’re planning on leaving right away. You really should get some sleep. You look tired.”
“We’re not going anywhere for a while. Too much we still need to talk about with these guys. They seem to have the other piece of the puzzle we’ve been trying to solve, which means I won’t be able to pry Al away with a crowbar. Maybe between us all we can come up with something.” He dragged himself to his feet. “Where do you sleep, anyway?”
“There’s a tent on the other side of the fire. I share it with Susanna and Lissy.”
Jason remembered the spacey girl from the library, and nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning. And V?”
“Yeah?”
Impulsively, he pulled her into a quick, hard hug. “It’s good to have you back.”
She kissed his cheek. “Yeah. It’s good to be back. Thanks for not giving up on me.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jason didn’t sleep that well; the ground was hard and his mind was too busy to let him get much rest. That, and he still wasn’t convinced that the DMW weren’t going to show up and massacre them all while they slept. That didn’t happen—he wasn’t sure if it was because one or more of the Forgotten were masking them from view or if the gang had simply decided to call it a night and lick their wounds. Either way, by the time the filtered light of the sunrise woke him, he’d only gotten about three hours of sleep.
When he sat up, he was surprised to discover that some of the Forgotten were already awake, including Marilee. The old lady was cooking something in a pot over the near fire, occasionally seasoning it with various things she pulled from the bags hanging off her shopping cart. “Morning,” Jason said as he came over.
“Oh, good morning. I didn’t expect you to be awake yet. Would you like something to eat?” She motioned toward the pot. “I’m making some oatmeal.”
“No, thanks. I’m gonna go check on Al.”
“I checked on him a little while ago. He’s still asleep, but he looks fine. I’d leave him alone until he wakes up, though: he can use all the rest he can get.”
“
You need help with anything?”
“Oh, no, I’m fine. But thanks for asking.”
He wished she did have something for him to do, since he hadn’t brought any of his gear and he didn’t feel comfortable wandering off. He was lucky, though: apparently these people weren’t much for sleeping in. By the time the sun was up so were most of them, gathering their things and rolling up their bedrolls. Some of them filtered off in groups of two or three; Jason didn’t ask where they were going. He figured by that time it was safe to go check on Stone, though, and then he’d go find Verity.
The mage was awake when Jason poked his head through the tent flap. He did look better—still tired, but not nearly as pale as he’d been last night. The black kitten was still curled up next to him, fast asleep. “I was wondering when you were going to show up,” he said, a little irritably.
“Sorry. Marilee said you weren’t awake yet, and that I shouldn’t bother you.”
“Just woke up a bit ago.”
“How do you feel?”
“Still fairly ghastly. My back hurts from sleeping on the ground, I’m starving, and I’d like very much to get out of this tent, but I’m not sure whether I should chance it yet.”
“Why don’t I bring you something to eat? Marilee’s making oatmeal. Then we can talk for a bit and figure out what we want to do next.”
“Excellent idea.”
Jason got up and went back outside. He’d collected a largish bowl of oatmeal and a plastic spoon from Marilee and was heading back to the tent when Verity intercepted him. “Morning,” she said, falling into step. “Where you going?”
“Taking this to Al,” he said, indicating the bowl.
“Ah. Can I come with you? I want to talk to you guys some more.”
“Uh, sure.”
Soon they were back inside the tent, seated on either side of Stone’s makeshift bed. He accepted the oatmeal gratefully and made a tentative attempt to prop himself up to a mostly sitting position. He evaluated that for a few seconds, then nodded and began eating.
“So…” Jason said. “Verity wants to know what we’re planning to do. She can’t leave here because she’ll lose it again if she gets away from Susanna, but we can’t stay here forever.”
“No,” Stone said, “we can’t.” He looked at Verity. “Pleasure to meet you, by the way. Forgive my lack of manners.” He set the bowl and spoon carefully down and offered her his hand. “Alastair Stone. And I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
Verity shook his hand, looking amused. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you too, last night,” she told him.
“All of it lies, I’m sure,” Stone said, raising an eyebrow. “So—Jason here tells me that your current lucidity is due to some sort of power one of these people has. Something about blocking out whatever’s causing your mental issues.”
Verity nodded. “Susanna. She can do that, sometimes. I’m not sure it’s not permanent because I’m afraid to get too far away from her and find out, but she says I’ll probably go back to the way I was if I do.”
“I see. I wonder if there might be something I can do about that.”
“What do you mean?”
Stone shrugged. “I’m not certain unless I examine you, but I have some expertise with this sort of thing. There’s a chance that I might be able to put a more permanent block in place.”
Her eyes widened, her expression warring between hope and cynicism. “You can do that?” she asked, leaning forward.
“As I said, I don’t know. And I’m not really in a position to check now. But it’s possible. I’m assuming that you don’t want to remain here.”
“No. It’s like I was telling Jason last night—I’m really grateful for what these people have done for me. I wouldn’t be alive if they hadn’t taken me in and hidden me from the DMW. But—” She sighed. “—I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a homeless camp because that’s the only way I can avoid going back to the halfway house—or somewhere worse, once I turn eighteen.”
“Quite understandable,” Stone said, nodding. Then he looked at Jason. “We need to figure out our next move.”
“Do we even have a next move? I mean—we’ve found V. That’s what we were trying to do. If you can do something that will block the crazy rays so she won’t go right back to the way she was before, then—that’s it, isn’t it? She can come home with me, or—” he shrugged “—I don’t really have much dragging me back down to Ventura. If she’d rather stay up here, I can find odd jobs here as easily as I could there.”
“Well,” Stone mused, “It can be it, if you want it to be. It’s up to you.”
Jason cocked his head like a confused dog. “I don’t get it. What else would there be?”
“We could go after it at its source.”
“What?” He stared. “Al, are you getting hit by the crazy rays? We don’t even know what the source is. Even if we wanted to, how would we find it?”
“I think he’s right,” Verity said suddenly.
Jason swung around to face her. “What? Why? Haven’t you had your fill of whatever these things are by now?”
She spread her hands in an encompassing gesture. “Look around you. All these people are always scared, always hiding, because whatever this thing is, it’s looking for them. It wants to kill them. They don’t really have any way to stop it.”
“And you think we do?”
She looked at Stone. “I don’t know. Do we?”
“No idea,” the mage said, but the wheels in his mind were obviously turning. “It would take a fair bit of research. Not only to figure out where the one in charge is—assuming that Lamar and the others are correct and there even is one in charge—but in order to go on the offensive against such a thing, we’d need to prepare.”
Jason sighed. Clearly his friend and his sister hadn’t realized that it was safe to step out of the Twilight Zone now and come back to the real world. “Can we talk about this later? I think right now our priority is getting V straightened out so she can leave, then getting back to civilization. And a shower,” he added, sniffing his leather jacket and wrinkling his nose.
Verity glared at him. “Don’t you get it, Jason? You’re part of the problem. You use words like ‘civilization’—the Forgotten are plenty civilized. Just because some of them are a little strange and they have to live like this doesn’t make them any less human.”
“You’re quite right,” Stone said softly. “This past night has been quite an eye-opener for me. It fascinates me that this whole subculture—this whole society—has existed right under our noses, and I never noticed it. I don’t think anybody has.”
“And you,” she said, turning her glare on Stone, “You sound like you just want to study them. They’re not some kind of—science experiment. They’re people. Believe me, I spent enough time like them to know. Do you know how much it sucks to have people ignore you, or be scared of you, because you don’t act ‘normal’? What the hell is normal, anyway?”
Stone raised his hands to ward off her words. “Calm down,” he said. “I make no secret of the fact that, yes, I’d like to know more about this society—and especially about these unusual powers many of them possess. As a mage, that interests me professionally. But in case you’ve forgotten, they’ve also saved my life. I owe them something for that. If there’s anything I can do to help rid them—and the rest of us, as it happens—of this threat, I’m willing to do what I can.”
Verity turned back to Jason. “Jason? What about you?”
He shrugged, looking resigned. “Looks like I’m outvoted, so I guess I’m in. But I still don’t think this is a great idea.” He paused a moment, and then: “So what now?”
“Now,” Stone said, “You hand me my shirt and help me up. I think I’m feeling brave enough to venture out, and we need to discuss some things with the Forgotten.”
&
nbsp; Jason did as requested, helping the mage shrug into his shirt and overcoat. The kitten, unceremoniously evicted from her warm sleeping spot, mewed a protest and began looking for new one. Verity scooped her up. “I’ll take her back to Marilee,” she said. “You guys come out when you’re ready.”
Stone, once Jason hauled him up to his feet, was alarmingly unsteady at first. His face paled again, and he looked like he was going to keel over any second, but things seemed to improve the longer he remained upright.
“You gonna make it?” Jason asked, hovering nearby, ready to grab him.
“I think so,” he said. “As I said before—nothing hurts except my stiff back, which is hardly short of amazing. Just feeling a bit dizzy.”
Jason nodded. “We need to get you more to eat than a bowl of oatmeal.” His stomach rumbled in sympathy at the thought. “And me too, it sounds like.”
The camp was fully awake now, split between people sitting around eating and those who were cleaning up the area: striking tents, putting out fires, gathering trash.
They found Lamar sitting under his favorite tree with Verity and a couple of other Forgotten they didn’t recognize. “You guys look like you’re getting ready to leave,” Jason said, helping Stone sit down, and then doing so himself.
Lamar nodded. “We are. We can’t afford to stay in the same place for too long. Our concealment abilities aren’t foolproof, so we like to move around every few days at least.”
“Where are you going?”
“One of our scouts found an abandoned building in Mountain View. We’ll probably head there. We prefer buildings to outside camps—they’re more defensible, and obviously warmer this time of year.”
“How do you guys—operate?” Jason asked. “How do you get food, move around—it seems like you’re pretty mobile.”
Lamar shrugged. “We do what we can do. Sometimes we take the bus, though for obvious reasons we can’t do that as a large group so it can be dangerous. Some of us do odd jobs to earn money, some beg, and some know the places to go where they can find things that others have discarded. There are people who help us—sympathetic restaurant owners and such. Sometimes we’ll deal with charities that we know to be safe—there are a few around here, like the Salvation Army, and Gordon Lucas’s events when they come around—they’re two of the few outfits where we’ve never sensed any Evil involvement. Forgotten groups don’t really have any formal organization, but generally each small group takes care of its own—pooling resources, using our talents to help how we can.”
