The Forgotten

by R. L. King

  “And what makes you think that the little ones operate on the same frequency as the big ones?” Jason persisted.

  “That’s why I keep you around, Jason,” Stone said with approval. “Because you ask all the good questions.” He glanced at Verity. “These are the kinds of questions you should be asking, by the way. Whomever you end up apprenticing with is going to expect you to keep your mind sharp at all times, and open to possibilities. Questioning and critical thinking are key to magic.”

  “Uh…sorry,” she said. “I’ll do better next time.”

  “See that you do,” he said, his smile and quirked eyebrow taking the edge off his words. Then he turned his attention back to Jason. “The answer to this particular question is: I have no idea. As I said, it’s a theory. In this case, I think it’s a pretty decent one, though. We’ve no reason to believe that the powerful ones and the weak ones aren’t the same ‘species,’ so it follows that they’d operate on the same magical frequency, albeit no doubt at different potency levels. So all I have to do, theoretically, is figure out what that is, and extrapolate from the housecat to build a cage that will hold the tiger.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Jason said. “Because I’m not in any hurry at all to have that tiger come flying out of your little cage and decide to hitch a ride in one of us.” He paused to dish up another helping of lasagna. “You said we have to find the Forgotten for this part. How come?”

  “Oh, and you were doing so well asking the good questions, too,” Stone said, chuckling. “Because unless you’ve developed some way of detecting the presence of people possessed by the Evil, we’re going to need someone who has one.”

  “I get it,” Verity said. “You’re going to see if you can get one of their folks who are sensitive to the Evil to come around with you until they find somebody.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I see two big problems with that,” Jason said. “First thing, the only one of those I’ve seen is a girl who can barely function under normal circumstance, and who freaks out and goes all catatonic when the bad stuff is around. And second, what are you going to do: just drive around at random until she goes off? That could take weeks.”

  “There’s more than one of them,” Verity told him. “I’ve heard of at least one other one—remember, Jason, I told you about him? The young boy?”

  Jason thought back. “Oh, yeah. The canary. The one you said the guy finally showed up who could talk to him. I never saw him around, though.”

  “He travels with a different group, but Lamar’s group could probably find him if they had to.”

  Stone was sitting back thinking while the two of them discussed this. “As for your other problem,” he said when there was a pause, “No, I wasn’t planning to drive around randomly. We’ve established that these things are attracted to strong emotions, particularly negative ones, yes?”

  Jason nodded. “Yeah. Everybody seems to agree on that.”

  “Well, then, we need to locate someplace where they might find them in high concentration. Operating on the assumption that they would prefer to take the path of least resistance, if they could find a way to be in the vicinity of strong emotions without having to do anything themselves to cause them, then they can simply sit by and—”

  “—get their emotional rocks off without risking getting arrested or discovered,” Jason finished.

  “You’ve such a way with words, Jason,” Stone said with an amused sigh. “But essentially, yes.”

  “So, we just need to come up with a place like that and go look there,” Verity said. “That doesn’t sound too hard.”

  “It might be harder than you think,” Stone cautioned. “Because remember—the second part of this plan is that we have to be able to get hold of a test subject. That means that places like hospitals or prisons are right out: too much security. We’d never manage it, even using magic.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d really rather not show up at a DMW meeting or anything like that,” Jason said.

  “No. That wouldn’t do at all. Let’s think for a moment: they prefer negative emotions. Fear, suffering, anger, despair, depression… what kinds of places do those occur in concentrated form?”

  Verity shrugged. “Mental institution?”

  “Uh—boxing match?” Jason offered. “Or some kind of underground fight?”

  “Hmm…” Stone considered. “Might be too hard to get into a mental institution even if they had one around here, and underground fights don’t generally allow tourists.”

  “Horror movie?” Verity suggested.

  “Good thought, but horror movies are strange things: yes, there’s fear, but it’s usually more excitement than fear. Most people don’t go to horror movies against their will, so it’s assumed that they want to be scared. Same reason I don’t think an amusement park would work. That, and again it would be hard to get someone out of a theater and drag them out to the van without someone seeing them.”

  “Wait, I’ve got it!” Verity yelled suddenly, grinning.

  Stone and Jason both looked at her, startled by her sudden outburst. “What?” Jason demanded.

  Her eyes darted around the room until she spotted a newspaper on the kitchen counter. She hurried out, grabbed it, and brought it back out to the table. Shoving the serving dishes out of the way, she spread it out and turned a few pages, then stabbed a triumphant finger at one of the ads. “There!”

  The two men stared at the place she was pointing. “Fear Asylum—the Scariest Haunted House in the Bay Area,” Jason read.

  “Right!” she said, nodding. “I remember reading about these when I was in the halfway house—I wanted so much to go, but of course they never let us. Charles went once, though, and told me about it. He said it was plenty scary. They actually had people faint and have to leave because they couldn’t get through the whole thing. They do it every year around this time.”

  “Oh, right,” Jason said. “They have one down in Oxnard, too. All the teenagers go there.” He looked at Stone. “You have no idea what we’re talking about, do you?”

  “Not a bit,” Stone said. “Keep going, though—it sounds fascinating.”

  “It’s at the fairgrounds,” Verity said, pointing at the ad. “They take over some of the exhibit buildings, and sometimes they build mazes outside, too.”

  “And why is this any different from a horror movie?” Stone asked.

  “Oh, trust me, it is,” Jason told him. “In a movie it’s all on screen. It can make you jump, but you know in the back of your mind that it can’t hurt you. These things are all based on that little fear everybody has: what if these aren’t all just employees who get paid to scare me? What if there’s a real axe murderer hiding in here somewhere?”

  “Sounds like a pretty good hunting ground for the Evil,” Verity said. “I’ll bet some of them even had their hosts get jobs there, so they could get a steady diet of fear.”

  “They hire a lot of teenagers and people my age,” Jason said, “and a lot of ’em don’t ask too many questions, you know?”

  “Excellent,” Stone said. “Sounds like just the sort of place we’re looking for. Now all we have to do is find Lamar’s group and see if we can convince Lissy—and perhaps a minder for her—to come along with us.”

  Jason cocked his head at the mage. “Uh—Al—just doing a reality check here. You do realize we’re basically talking about kidnapping, right?”

  Stone nodded. “Quite so. But given the stakes, I think it’s worth it to take the chance. We’ll have to be careful, of course, and find another location to do our experiments, but—” He looked at Jason. “You’re not backing out now, are you?”

  Jason shook his head. “No, no. Just making sure we all know what we’re getting into, is all.”

  “I’d say if you want to get down to it, what we’re really doing is stopping a kidnapping,” Stone
pointed out. “Tell me—would you rather have yourself borrowed for a few hours’ worth of harmless and painless magical experiments, or have some sort of alien hitchhiker riding around in your brain?”

  “Well, when you put it that way…”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  As it turned out, it wasn’t hard at all to locate Lamar’s group. Stone, Jason, and Verity simply drove around the Mountain View area until they spotted likely looking groups of vagrants, then showed them the triangle-and-rays symbol and asked if they’d seen anyone matching the description. The first few gave them blank looks, but finally they found a group in Sunnyvale who immediately recognized the symbol and suggested that they look in the back quadrant of a mostly abandoned mall not far away. After that, it was a simple matter of going there and driving around until they spotted the symbol. They didn’t even have to find a way in: Hector was just coming outside for a smoke as they were getting out of the van, and he led them through a maze of maintenance corridors to a large, empty storeroom.

  It was only Lamar’s group now, which at some point seemed to have merged with Hector’s: Lamar himself, Marilee, Benny, Lissy, Frank the Scribbler, Hector, Susanna, and a couple others that Stone and Jason hadn’t met yet. Marilee’s cart was parked off to the side, and the kitten played among the bags.

  “Good to see you again,” Lamar said. “We didn’t try to contact you yet because we’re still working on getting the information you wanted. Things move slowly in our world, and some folks are nervous about getting involved.”

  “That’s all right,” Stone assured him. “We’re not quite ready for that step yet, so if it takes a while, that’s not an issue. We need to ask you something else, though.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Stone took him and Marilee off in a corner along with Jason and Verity, and together they explained their plan. Both of the Forgotten looked scared; Marilee glanced across at Lissy, who was, as usual, humming to herself with a vague, happy smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “Lissy is—vulnerable, as you’ve seen. And she can be hard to manage for anyone who doesn’t know her well. We take care of her here. She’d never make it on the streets on her own.”

  Stone nodded. “I wouldn’t even ask you to consider it if there were another option. You mentioned, Jason said, that there was another with a similar power—a young boy?”

  Marilee shook her head. “No, that’s Kody. He used to be with us for a while, but he’s moved on. He finally found someone who could communicate with him, and when he moved on, Kody went with him. We haven’t heard from either of them since they left.”

  “So, you don’t have anybody who can communicate with Lissy?” Jason asked.

  “Susanna can a little. She seems to have a calming effect on her, unless the Evil are very close. You saw how she gets—”

  “Would Susanna maybe come along too?” Verity asked. “This is really important, Lamar. And we won’t let anything happen to her. You know we wouldn’t.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jason spoke up. “Wasn’t Susanna the one who figured out the DMW was coming when you guys were at Melody’s house? Isn’t she the one who made you get out? Couldn’t she just come with us and do that?”

  “Sadly, no,” Lamar said. “Susanna’s ability is more general. She can detect the approach of danger—any danger, not just the Evil. And it’s very spotty.”

  “Plus,” Marilee added, “from what it sounds like, there wouldn’t be any danger for her to notice. If the Evil has some of their people working at this place to be near the fear, they wouldn’t need to do anything to cause it, other than what their job needs, right?”

  Stone nodded. “Very good point.” He sighed. “So we’re back to Lissy. If you have any other ideas, I’d be happy to hear them, but I’m fresh out at the moment.”

  “I’ll ask her,” Marilee said, still looking troubled. “I’ll ask her and Susanna if they’ll go with you.”

  After she’d gone, Stone turned back to Lamar. “We need one other thing as well—a place to do what we need to do. Preferably one that’s not far from this haunted house.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard,” Lamar said. “That isn’t the best area of San Jose—I’m sure there are abandoned buildings there. Let me talk with the others for a moment. I’m assuming you want to do this soon?”

  “As soon as possible, I think, yes.”

  Lamar left as well, and after about five minutes, Marilee and he returned together, with Lissy and Susanna trailing behind them. Susanna turned out to be the large, middle-aged woman in the multicolored sweater who had helped work on Stone when he was injured. Jason and Stone hadn’t gotten a close look at her before; she bore more than a passing stylistic resemblance to Willow from the hospital. Both were large, had frizzy hair, and had a certain earth-mother look to them. She didn’t look too pleased about the plans. “I’m not liking this at all,” she said. “Taking Lissy out among reg’lar people. She gets real nervous doing that.”

  “It won’t be for very long,” Stone assured her. “And we’ll make her safety—and yours—our top priority.”

  Lissy smiled a wide, vague smile and started humming a radio jingle under her breath.

  “Plus,” Susanna said, “I’ve seen these—these haunted house places. It’ll scare the stuffing out of the poor little thing.”

  “She might not even have to go inside,” Jason said. “Depends on how they’ve got it set up.”

  Susanna sighed. “I know there’s no helpin’ it. I know what you’re tryin’ to do, and if you can do it, then things will be better for all of us. But it just don’t seem right to—take advantage of her like this.”

  Lissy patted her hand. “Boo scary,” she said, making a ‘peek-a-boo’ gesture.

  “All right,” Susanna conceded with a sigh, putting her ample arm around Lissy’s thin shoulders. “If we’re going to do it, though, let’s get it over with.”

  Stone, Jason, and Verity came back the next night to implement their plan. They’d spent the rest of the day going over strategies, trying to anticipate contingencies or possible things that could go wrong. “You know you can’t do that, right?” Jason said as they got into the van. “No matter what kinds of things you plan for, something always happens that you didn’t expect. That’s the way these things work.”

  “There’s my good old optimist brother,” Verity said, grinning. But she too looked nervous.

  All three of them were dressed in dark, nondescript clothes that would blend in with the crowds of teens and twentysomethings that would be the attraction’s largest clientele.

  The Forgotten were waiting for them—not just Susanna and Lissy, but also Lamar, Marilee, and Hector were standing outside, hidden in the shadows. To the new arrivals’ relief, Susanna had exchanged her colorful sweater for a drab brown one. Lissy’s dress was covered with a shapeless dark coat, and she wore a jaunty knitted cap that actually, if you didn’t get too close to her, might make passersby think that she was a normal high school or college girl. It was only when they got too close and saw her eyes that they would realize otherwise.

  “Ready to go?” Stone asked.

  Lamar gave them the address of an abandoned gas station near the fairgrounds. “We won’t be able to join you there—it’s too far to travel in such a short time—but there shouldn’t be anyone else around either. There’s a Forgotten group over there, but you might not be able to find them. They know you’ll be there, though.”

  Stone thanked him, waited until everyone was in the van, and drove off. Next to him between the driver’s and passenger’s seat was a black leather shoulder bag containing some of the magical items he’d created; he also wore a couple of things he hadn’t had before: a ring with a blocky purple stone on his right hand, and an odd-looking amulet pinned to his shirt underneath his overcoat.

  Nobody spoke for a while as they drove. Stone had the radio on and Lissy
entertained them by humming along to most of the songs and many of the jingles—though it was soon obvious that while she was responding to the music, the tunes she hummed were of her own devising, and had little resemblance to the ones actually playing.

  “What’s the deal with Lissy?” Jason asked at last. He was pleased to note—but of course didn’t say this—that both Lissy and Susanna appeared to have bathed recently and put on the closest they had to clean clothes. Aside from not making the van smelly, that also meant that they would be less likely to draw attention to the group.

  “She’s been with Hector’s crew a long time,” Susanna said. Lissy herself seemed oblivious that she was being talked about. “His group and ours only just joined up, after we lost a couple, but we’ve helped each other out a lot over that time. Nobody knows where she came from. We found her wanderin’ around downtown San Jose one day, pickin’ flowers in the park and dancin’ around to the music in her head. When she tried to dance out into traffic a couple of times, Hector dragged her back and took her to Marilee. She seemed to take a likin’ to the group, especially Marilee, and she’s been there ever since.”

  Jason nodded. “So you don’t know if she was—okay—before whatever happened?”

  “No, no way to know that,” Susanna said. “Hey, you mind if I smoke?” She’d already started fumbling in her shapeless handbag.

  “Erm—” Stone said, uncomfortable. “Rental van. No-smoking policy. Sorry.”

  “Damn.” She tossed the bag back on the seat in annoyance.

  They spotted their destination from a couple blocks away: it was one of the few parts of the area that was lit up. A large sign towered above the fairground’s box office area, proclaiming FEAR ASYLUM HAUNTED HOUSE with appropriately gory artwork, surrounded by flashing orange and purple lights. Loud and spooky classical music performed in heavy-metal style boomed out over the area, and a large knot of people were gathered around outside in a rough line waiting to buy tickets.