by Angela Hunt
Brenda dropped her magazine and searched the room, then pointed to the coffee table. I snatched the letter up and reread the so-called suicide note. No doubt, the letter had been written in the professor’s language and style, all except the ending—
“Here.” I took the letter and sat at my grandmother’s desk, then pulled a highlighter from the drawer. “This paragraph, the one where he talks about his apartment. Notice how it doesn’t flow like the rest of the paragraphs?”
Tank peered over my left shoulder as Brenda looked over my right. “Yeah, so? The cop said the professor was losing it at that point.”
I snickered. “Have you ever seen the professor lose it? Ever?”
The corner of Brenda’s mouth dipped. “Good point.”
“It’s gotta be a message. Something . . . encrypted. A pattern.”
I stared at the page, highlighter in hand, then focused on the paragraphs addressed to me.
Andrea—first, dear girl, please accept my apology for any worry or trouble this has caused you, especially considering that I am writing this in your home. But though you have never pried or queried, you surely must know that I have made many regrettable choices on my journey along the path of life. I have therefore decided to end this path. I have learned all I need to know.
I digress. So sorry. I am giving my old apartment the boot— key inside ceramic ant. Landlord has been busy traveling so don’t expect him to repaint. Rent due on seventh. File speech copy under “dimension,” please, for others may wish to read. Remember— unlike me, you never needed help. Godspeed.
“By the way,” Brenda drawled, “I can’t say that I was pleased to read his comments about me. Even a man who’s planning to check out should have better manners.”
“He wants people to think this is a suicide note,” I said. “Because . . .” I waited for an answer to pop into my head.
“Because why?” Brenda asked.
I sighed. “I got nothin’.”
“What’s that about a ceramic ant?” Tank said, pointing to the paragraph that was nothing like the others. “Some kind of garden statue?”
“He’s not a gardener,” I said, focusing on that line. “And his landlord isn’t a person, it’s the university. And he doesn’t pay rent, the apartment is faculty housing, provided for tenured professors in residence . . .” I caught my breath. “That entire paragraph is bogus, but no one who reads this letter would know that except . . . me.”
“So—” Brenda twirled one of her dreadlocks around her finger—“what’s he trying to tell you?”
I grinned as the light came on. “It’s a code, probably a numbered sequence. So what number would he use?”
We looked at each other. “The year?” Brenda suggested.
“His birthday?” Tank said.
“It’s gotta be a smallish number,” I said, reading the paragraph again. “A number small enough to repeat in this paragraph.”
“Five.” Daniel appeared beside Brenda. He lifted his hand and counted, pointing to each of us: “One, two, three, four, and—“ he pointed to the letter—“five.”
“Five of us—makes as much sense as anything. So I’m keeping every fifth word, starting with my name.”
Andrea—first, dear girl, please accept my apology for any worry or trouble this has caused you. But though you have never pried or queried, you surely must know that I have made many regrettable choices on my journey along the path of life. I have therefore decided to end this path.
“Andrea accept worry caused have you I choices the have this,” Brenda read. “Makes no sense at all.”
“So let’s try the second paragraph.”
I digress. So sorry. I am giving my old apartment the boot— key inside ceramic ant. Landlord has been busy traveling so don’t expect him to repaint. Rent due on seventh. File speech copy under “dimension,” please, for others may wish to read. Remember— unlike me, you never needed help. Godspeed.
“I am the ant,” Tank read, “traveling to seventh dimension wish me Godspeed.” He blinked. “That doesn’t make any sense, either.”
“Oh, yes it does.” I brought my hand to my mouth as the pieces fell into place. “The ant, remember? The sugar ant from his speech, the ant traveling on the thin piece of paper. If you twist the paper, the ant can move from one dimension to another. The professor—somehow—found a way to move into the seventh dimension!”
“Wish me Godspeed,” Brenda whispered, her eyes widening. “How in the world did the old fart manage to do that?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, laughter rising from my throat, “and no one is going to believe us if we try to tell them where he is. But he’s not dead. He has only . . . moved.”
Tank stepped backward and rubbed his brow. “I still don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to.” I threw him a reassuring smile. “You know how Littlefoot came from another universe? It’s kind of like that. The professor’s just gonna be out of touch for a while.”
“But everyone’s going to think he’s dead,” Brenda pointed out. “And face it, maybe he is. Maybe his technique or whatever he used to zap himself out of here didn’t work. Maybe he got to the seventh dimension and a monster ate him. Maybe he transported himself to a Flatland kind of world where he doesn’t fit, so he imploded. So many things could have gone wrong—”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” I said. “All of that stuff is out of our control, even out of his control. But at least we know he’s not floating out in the Gulf. He’s not being eaten by sharks. He’s . . . he’s like an explorer in the new world, conquering unexplored territories.”
“He wanted to correct his mistakes,” Tank said, his eyes softening. “I get that. And if he can find a way to do that—” Tank shrugged. “I’d love to hear all about it sometime.”
“So what do we do now?” Brenda asked. She glanced toward the hallway, where the empty bedroom lay. “The man ain’t comin’ back.”
“I guess—” I made a face—“as distasteful as it will be, I guess we have to go along with the suicide scenario. That’s how the professor set it up, so I guess that’s what he wanted.”
“Roger that,” Tank said.
“Okay,” Brenda echoed.
Chapter Thirteen
As the black-clad mourners milled around the empty coffin, I lifted my gaze to the low-hanging clouds and wondered if the professor had found a way to peel back the curtain and spy on his former dimension. Probably not, considering it had taken him a lifetime to figure out how to engineer a path to wherever he was now.
He would have been pleased by the turnout at his graveside. Lots of faculty, the university president, and dozens of students who had either loved his lectures or hated them, depending on their point of view. Someone in his family had sprung for an expensive spray of roses on the casket, but no other flowers stood at the graveside. As per the wishes expressed in the professor’s will, there had been no funeral or memorial service. There would be no wake, but I knew that most of the university faculty would soon head over to the Thirsty Scholar Pub, where they’d lift a glass in his memory.
I stood in respectful silence as the funeral director murmured a respectful, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and the casket lowered into the grave, accompanied by the whine of an electric motor. A couple of mourners tossed carnations into the dark space, then most people wandered away.
I remained, feeling it my duty to see this charade through to the end.
I wasn’t the only one who lingered. A woman in a black hat and veil stood on the other side of the open grave. She pressed a tissue to her eyes, and sniffed as she wiped away tears.
Who was she, and where had she been during the professor’s final years? She must have loved him, because her tears were genuine . . .
I stepped closer so I might better see her. Silver hair brushed her shoulders, and when she lifted her head I saw a lovely face marked by the passing of more than a few years. She might have been the professor’s age,
or even a little younger, and she was still a beautiful woman. Was she one of the professor’s regrets? Had he found a way back to her . . . and his younger self?
I was working up the courage to speak to her when the grave diggers approached. One of them lowered his shovel and nodded at me, then he and his partner removed the fake grass that served to disguise the mound of dirt that would fill in the grave. Time to go.
I drew a deep breath and looked up, but the woman had already left the graveside. I saw her walking, not toward the parking lot, but another section of the cemetery. Did she know someone else buried here?
I strode forward, intending to hurry and catch her, but turned my ankle when I stepped in a patch of soft dirt. “Ooof!” I sank to the ground as gracefully as I could, and the grave diggers dropped their shovels and hurried to help.
“Gotta be careful around here, Miss.”
“Watch your step.” Crooked smile. “We wouldn’t want you to fall in.”
I managed a smile in return. “It’s these heels. I don’t usually wear shoes this high.”
I brushed dirt off my knees and tucked my purse under my arm, intent on catching the dark figure moving through the tombstones and mausoleums.
“Ma’am?” I called, hobbling forward. My ankle was beginning to throb, and if I pushed it, I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow. I stopped and pulled off my shoes, then hop-skipped forward, lurching left to right as I searched for the woman in black.
I stopped and waved one of my shoes. “Hey, lady!”
She turned and looked at me, and the expression on her face was so heart-rending that I nearly wept. My mind had supplied a hundred reasons why she would be standing at the professor’s grave—she was a former lover, a long-lost sister, an ex-wife, a fellow teacher, a nun he’d known in his days as a priest—and she had loved him, but time and circumstance had kept them apart. But now she’d come here to mourn him—
“Will you wait, please?”
The woman didn’t answer, but moved behind a wall of marble that blocked my view.
I hurried on. Finally I reached the spot where the woman had disappeared, but when I looked around, I saw nothing but a marble tombstone etched with:
Marissa Lorena Longworth,
1958-1999
She walks in beauty.
No sign of the woman. Only a fence at the eastern boundary of the cemetery and a path that led back to the entrance.
I followed the path, taking my time and placing as little weight on my injured ankle as I could. When I got back to my apartment, I’d put my leg up, cover the ankle with a bag of ice, and call Tank and Brenda. They had wanted to fly up for the graveside service, but I had talked them out of it, promising a full postmortem report.
Knowing that I had my hands full with cleaning out the professor’s apartment and office, Tank had volunteered to be my go-to guy for reports on BEKs. He had set up a Google search, and was trolling the Internet for new reports of BEK sightings—which, he told me unhappily—were on the rise. Black-eyed kids were being reported in every country, on every continent. A guard at an Arctic outpost had even opened his door one night to find two black-eyed kids outside.
At least the Diaz family had their baby again. Though, according to my grandmother’s latest report, the doctors had not yet been able to remove the mysterious implant.
I got to my car, leaned heavily on the back passenger door, and managed to get my door unlocked and opened. Thankfully, I didn’t have to use my injured ankle to drive, so I slid in, carefully placed my left leg in a safe position, and pulled my car door closed.
And then, in the side view mirror, I saw the professor, as clear as stark reality. I turned, expecting to see him standing beside the car, but I was alone. I looked at the mirror again. The professor still flickered there, then he pulled something from a coat he wore and held it up—the printed photo, the selfie of our group.
My smile cracked into a sob. The professor’s smile softened, then he pressed the photo to his chest and covered it with his hand.
And then he was gone.
Caught in a place between laughter and tears, I leaned my head against the steering wheel and struggled to get a grip on my emotions. He was alive. He was okay. He was just . . . somewhere else.
I smiled as I slid the key into the ignition.
Sneak Peek at Harbingers 12
The Village
Alton Gansky
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, tucked away in the dogwood and hickory trees and bordering a noisy creek, is a town——a village, really. It is hidden from the world and unknown to even longtime residents of the area. Tourists who show up there are usually lost and residents of the town are happy to show them the way out.
I've been there and I don't much wanna go back. Neither do my friends. There isn’t much to catch the eye in Newland. Not on the surface, anyway. Just some old buildings on Main Street, a shop or two or three geared to the needs of the residents, not passersby or interlopers like us. There are two eating establishments serving up grits, fried trout, and biscuits with gravy. There is a saloon for those who prefer to drink their nourishment from a beer mug, and a sheriff’s office that is open most Tuesdays. The GONE FISHIN’ sign hangs in the window the rest of the week. There is a small, white chapel at the end of the street for God—fearing men like me.
Newland is two towns, not one. I mean that literally. I know it makes no sense but it is still true. Those who have followed our previous adventures know that very little of what we face makes sense. Not to me, anyway, and the others don't seem to know any more than I do. This might be the weirdest story yet. Only the good Lord knows if stranger things await.
My name is Bjorn Christensen but you can call me Tank. Everyone else does. And now, I have a story to tell you. I don’t expect you to believe it. I lived it and I have trouble believing it. Still, it happened, and it happened in this way . . .
Order The Village now.
Don’t miss the other books in the Harbingers series which can be purchased separately or in collections:
CYCLE ONE: INVITATION
The Call
The House
The Sentinels
The Girl
CYCLE TWO: MOSAIC
The Revealing
Infestation
Infiltration
The Fog
CYCLE THREE (in progress)
Leviathan
The Mind Pirates
Hybrids
The Village
Also by Angela Hunt
Roanoke
Jamestown
Hartford
Rehoboth
Charles Towne
Magdalene
The Novelist
Uncharted
The Awakening
The Debt
The Elevator
The Face
Let Darkness Come
Unspoken
The Justice
The Note
The Immortal
The Truth Teller
The Silver Sword
The Golden Cross
The Velvet Shadow
The Emerald Isle
Dreamers
Brothers
Journey
Doesn’t She Look Natural?
She Always Wore Red
She’s In a Better Place
Five Miles South of Peculiar
The Fine Art of Insincerity
The Offering
Esther: Royal Beauty
Bathsheba: Reluctant Beauty
RISEN
About the Author
Web page: www.angelahuntbooks.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/angela.e.hunt
For more information:
@angiehunt
angela.e.hunt
www.angelahuntbooks.com
[email protected]
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