“How do you …?” Tina asked perplexed catching herself in midsentence with a wide open jaw as she saw James was holding his hand in mid-air towards the direction of the door and the door remained completely shut.
“I wish I knew” James answered even more confused than she was. James lowered his arm and the metal door budged open slightly again and he quickly raised it again and it shut again.
“Hold it, man.” Tina yelled at him.
“I can’t hold it like this forever.”
“Right, we need a plan. We’ll figure out this freak show later.” Tina yelled. “Uh, uh” Tina looked up while wiping her brow then saw an air vent blocking a shaft. “That’s it! Quick, give me a boost.”
“I can’t” yelled James.
“Come on; just use your free hand.”
“Uh OK.” James used his free hand to hoist Tina up as she stepped up onto his hand and she tried to grab hold of the vent grate but fell back on the wall behind her. “Come on”, James uttered.
“Damn it” she said. “Try once more, James.”
“Come on you have one last try, this is our last try.” He said in a panic feeling the weight of the door on his arms starting to give way and it wouldn’t be long before it opened despite his efforts. She stepped up onto his hand, took a deep breath, and jumped up grabbing the vent and hung from it with one hand like a chimpanzee then she disengaged the hatch on the vent with her free hand and shimmied up the shaft. “Yes. Nice work”, James added reaching up to Tina’s free hand reaching down.
“Come on boy” she reached out to grab his hand held up high and helped pull him up as he continued to hold the metal door shut by keeping his other hand to the metal door until he was safely in the shaft and sealed the vent shut. They crawled away rapidly.
Moments later the metal door swung open and a platoon of five uniformed officers ran in and fell in nearly on top of one another.
“What the hell?” A petite officer yelled.
“No one is here.” A taller officer commented.
“Then who was holding the damn door?!” Yelled a muscular built mustached officer with a gold shield and dark sun glasses even indoors as he commanded the fear and attention of the other officers. “Find them!!!” He took off his glasses revealing his dark eyes as pitch black as coal and determined as ever, “find them all.”
CHAPTER 21
“Who were they and how did they escape?” Shouted the mustached man to his subordinates in his office, the glass panel on the door read “Michael Bromely, Lieutenant”.
“I don’t know, Sir.” Spoke a taller dark haired man, with blue stripes on his uniform, who had a monotone and calm vernacular. “I had about seventeen men try to open that door together but they could not even budge it. There was a time when they thought that they had it but someone or something on the other side shut it again and they couldn’t open it again until they finally managed to open it. We think it was a malfunction locking mechanism that eventually gave way due to age what else could it be?”
“What else indeed?” Bromley spoke with an agitated and condescending tone.
“It’s as if someone or something released its hold on it,” said another man with a short stature and whiney voice and long whiskers as he stood between the other two men.
“Good point Sergeant Docson.” Bromley uttered.
“Thank you.” Docson replied.
“Well, all I know is that someone or something better be wearing cuffs real soon because no one makes a mockery of my department and gets away with it. I want whoever is responsible caught.” Bromley yelled.
“Yes Sir,” replied the monotone man, Sergeant Offson.
“Any words on the two escapees yet?” Bromley asked his subordinates.
“Not yet. We cannot rule out the possibility sir that they are somehow involved in the disappearing act in the stairwell.” Docson replied.
“That is giving those two morons way too much credit, Sergeant. Keep me posted. Search every possible nook and cranny in this place and leave no stone unturned until you find them. We have to report to higher men soon. Dismissed.” Bromley stood there thinking with his back to the door and his hands on his hips, feet at attention as the Sergeants saluted their commanding officer and walked out of the office shutting the door behind them. “Who are they?” Bromley asked himself thinking back to a similar encounter he experienced in his youth as a rookie cop officer on the beat of the mid-1980s Chronix Bay. “It couldn’t be.” He wondered.
It was twenty six-years ago and a different time back then. He was a cocky officer straight out of the police academy walking down the street twirling his night stick and whistling a happy tune, “The Saints Go Marching In.” He still had a mustache but less pronounced and no sun glasses during the evening patrol. He stopped in his tracks at the sign of a hold up, a robbery, in his area.
“Hey, give me all your money,” said a masked man raising a pocket knife to an elderly woman.
“Ooh no,” said the woman shaking mercifully as she handed over her pocketbook.
“Hold it right there,” yelled the young Bromley as he ran to them waiving his nightstick then the masked man turned and ducked as Bromley approached swinging his nightstick at the masked man’s face. The masked man then laughed at Bromley and struck his left arm with his switchblade.
“Ouch” Bromley saw his arm bleeding through his blue uniform and he stepped back as the perpetrator came at him to finish the job when all of a sudden a flash of light blinded him for an instant, a yellowish blue haze, shone above them and a large object fell out of the sky directly above them landing on the masked man knocking him to the ground and rendering him unconscious. Bromley and the elderly woman stood in a grateful relief and awe as they realized that it was not an object that fell from the sky and saved them but a man, a man who got up as quickly as he landed and ran into the street as a Mack truck was approaching. Bromley’s training in face identification and suspect tracking helped him recognize the man as a tall above average build Caucasian male with blue eyes and dark hair, a greyish shirt and suit and a logo of some kind of gold etched onto it. The man fiddled with his wrist as he ran and did not say a word but in a matter of seconds as he was in the middle of the street looking at them held his wrist squeezed something and vanished in a brilliant flash of light of yellow and blue just like when he arrived and as the Mack truck passed over the spot where he once stood. The pair stood their ground in shock of this sight they both knew that they would never forget.
Bromley’s eyes were widened with disbelief at what he just saw and now decades later there are more wrinkles of age on his face while the same awe and wonder of disbelief as to what happened that day remain with him and he ponders that it always will be. In the present age he was wiser and more seasoned at his job, his physical wounds had healed, but the memory of that night was etched in him unhealed forever. He never saw the man in light again or learned of the origin of the mysterious vanishing man.
Bromley stayed in touch with the old woman who was the first crime victim he helped on the job and she passed on a few years later taking her unanswered questions about the mystery of the vanishing man to her grave. Bromley feared he would be fated to do the same. He thought of it from time to time but never told anyone because they might think he was crazy. The bust did advance his career exponentially as he was given a heroes medal by the police commissioner, had a spot in the hall of fame in his precinct as well as a quick promotion to detective. He felt honored but often ashamed taking credit for a collar that wouldn’t have happened had it not been for some unbelievable intervention. His catholic background made him think that it was a sign from God and that the man maybe was an angelic heavenly messenger amongst us come to help him but his scientific studies in college made him think that maybe some more physical down to earth explanation existed like some fluke science experiment gone awry, a form of science unknown to him, or voodoo magic or something beyond his comprehension entirely. He only knows for sure
that he would have been dead had he not received that help when he needed it whether it was an accident or some kind of design by a higher grand person or entity, so he was grateful and thanked God for the chance to live on and continue to serve the public. Now he wondered if somehow this past had returned to haunt him and whether the mysterious vanishing man had somehow returned and the incident in the stairwell was somehow connected. “Hmmm.”
CHAPTER 22
The long crawl through the narrow shaft was arduous for the duo trapped like rats in single file struggling to make their way to freedom and making it outside was like being relieved of a heavy burden.
“I can’t believe I got the tail end of this deal”, said James.
“Hey, I tried to hold it in.” Tina sheepishly replied and both smirked. “Where are we now?” asked Tina. They were exiting the shaft and exposed to a wide field having followed the chute to an exterior yard surrounding the facility and fence work they observed surrounding the compound as far as the eye could see with barbed wire wound around each top with another set on top of that. The sound of barking dogs permeated the air around them and the odor of burnt ash protruded about resulting in a burned stench that escalated like the fires of hell searing with the brightness of the guard towers spread up with guards armed and ready like leviathans awaiting their prey, those eager to defy them. “We may have a problem here, James,” Tina said.
James thought to himself that he would not have been put by fate into this situation if it was completely hopeless. “There is always a way,” he thought to himself and looked about the yard his eyes scouring the vast expanse before him with hawk like precision and something clicked inside and he could accelerate that sight. His eyes began seeing things quicker and then quicker searching frantically and then a red dot appeared before him brightly and it began lighting his way quickly growing and growing encompassing the whole field of his vision before him and rushing forward, as if a self-facilitated visual Doppler effect. His senses grew wider as they tunneled into a swirling vortex of infrared light penetrating his eyes and suddenly it stopped as he was face to face with a small doorway underneath one of the towers with a padlock on it, a trap door leading directly under the yard and outside via an underground passageway directly to the open field behind the jail once used for shipping receivables according to an old sign he envisioned in his mind’s eye with all of the passage way. But it was apparently long since abandoned as evidenced by the faded dirty roads and overgrown grass. There the door was covered with dirt and rust decayed over many years of neglect. The door was otherwise well hidden and invisible to the naked eye but somehow James new enhanced senses picked it up. The door was meters away from their location but seemed to James like it was directly in front of him. He smiled as he looked at his baffled companion and explained that there was a way out. They agreed to embark on the long quest out. They maneuvered their way slowly across the chain link fence then ducked as they approached the visual light range of the object tower and then quietly crawled near the fence what James described quietly to Tina as a virtual blind spot to the guardsman in the tower. Then they held their position until nightfall and James explained his story to Tina and how he managed to figure out their final escape but she couldn’t believe how his new abilities worked. Nonetheless, she was grateful that it was a reality as a gift as she told him. At night fall they made their way to the door but there was a problem being that they would be out of the blind spot and exposed to capture by the tower security guards light that was turned on after dark, a beam so bright to make the most hardened criminal freeze dead in her tracks.
As they approached the trap door, Tina quickly used an old trick from her life on the streets by ripping off part of her shirt and entering it carefully into the lock of the keyhole and then sliding it back and forth very fast carefully not to break it but fast and steady enough to use the friction to trigger the unlocking mechanism, as she explained to James. After several seconds, nothing happened and James looked at Tina with an amused grin.
“I thought it would work.” She responded to his grin.
“Let me try.” James flung his wrist in the air and struck his hand down as he closed his eyes and pressed hard with his mind’s eye. In a matter of seconds, the lock clicked open. He opened his eyes and smiled as he removed the lock and opened the door.
“You got some real magic power, James” Tina added dropping herself into the hole.
James frantically looked up at the spotlight and saw it approaching and knew that they had to move. The duo quickly escaped through the trap door and down a tunnel and collapsed the door just as the light of the tower passed right over the sealed hatch.
James and Tina escaped from the tunnel leading from the place of their captivity. The road out of the tunnel and into the open field was lonesome and arduous for James and Tina. After getting passed the stench of the tunnels and the muddy liquid on their shoes and clothes, it was a long run from the tunnel exits across the muddy and filthy field. They walked down the muck-ridden dirt road looking up at the stars and quietly holding one another close trying to avoid being spotted by the guards who might spy over to watch the other side of the fence beyond the tunnels. Fortune smiled on them as the nearest pickup truck made its way puttering along the dirt road for “hidden treasures” as the sole occupant referred to, a poor dirt farmer named Melville who was more than happy to have their company as he gave them a ride back towards civilization. He was the only one with a vehicle who stopped by so they were grateful for the ride.
“You kids are heading to Chronix Bay, are ya?” said Melville. “I find it you gonna need some supplies and things.” Melville was a simple man but had a coy attention to detail.
“Yeah, we would be very appreciative of any help you could give us in finding some cheap supplies. We are kind of low on funds right now” said Tina.
“Lots of varmints in town got what you need. Free Castle is a mighty good watering hole to wet your whistle and ponder your next move.” Melville replied. “I don’t wanna mind what you two were doing nearby the old loading front for the prison.”
“Good. ‘Cause we ain’t reckoning to be telling” laughed Tina mimicking Melville’s old southern vernacular.
“Well, we aren’t in Chronix Bay anymore. The first thing that we need to agree to do is get as far as they could away from here.” James whispered to Tina.
“This here be Radcliffe. Chronix Bay, varmints, that is quite a ways east,” said Melville with his broken dialect and peculiar vernacular depicting his lack of a proper education.
James and Tina looked at one another with dismay. They knew they had been transported far but not knowing how far would make it difficult to plan an escape somewhere else. They rode with Melville in his green faded pickup truck and spent the two and a half hour ride talking to them about his job lifting hay and feeding his pet rooster named Roger. The duo smiled with complete joy as they endured this proverbial debauchery and were still ever grateful when he let them in and even more grateful when he let them off in a small town outside of Chronix Bay called Radcliffe population 2001 but were not sure about the 1 according to the sign on the outskirts of town.
CHAPTER 23
James and Tina wandered together to the local bar called the “Free Castle”, referred by Melville. which seemed aptly appropriate as they had flown the coop sort of speak and now were in need of disguises and a way out of state as Tina advised but James felt that there more things to do here. They waited for their entry into their future as they entered the dark and dingy bar full of loud music and thundering sounds of rowdy bar patrons banging on the bar and tables demanding service and singing and talking, singing drinking songs, as the place was filled to the rear with what appeared to James to be the most undesirable of characters, bikers talking about the stretch they just did at the prison up the road for convictions stretching from aggravated assault to murder and rape and various other crimes he overheard as they passed through the ruckus. He pictured
this place as known as a harbinger of future criminal activity. Meanwhile he observed his companion clumsily walking in with a big smile as if feeling comfortable amongst the riffraff he abhorred.
“You like it here?” James asked apprehensively approaching the rough interior of the bar.
“I love it. I used to hang out in places like this all the time back in the day. Nearly was raised in them before my stretch in the orphanage. Come on.” Tina beckoned for James to follow her.
“Wow”, James thought, “Ok I’ll stay behind you then,” he added.
To those around them it was home but to James it seemed different. He never asked to be part of this or even requested a part of it. He felt far from home and miserable, like an outsider walking amongst those with a mile long rap sheet and trouble caused at every turn. He was set up for something and did not know why. He looked at his companion who felt more at ease as she wandered around the bar beckoning to him to follow and remain casual. Before his current predicament, he never imagined setting foot into a place like this. Now he felt he had no choice. He wondered how he would survive as he lacked of knowledge of the difference between a Harley Davidson and a motor scooter as the bikers discussed before him. He felt uncertain of himself regarding his ignorance of the names and images on the leather jackets signifying separate groups or gang activity as he guessed to himself.
“We should leave,” James insisted awkwardly.
“No sit down. Don’t worry,” said Tina who ushered him to the empty stools in the bar left vacant after an overweight biker whose rear end occupied both stools fell back from a combination of drunkenness and dizziness.
James and Tina sat and looked about at the bar seeing only dirty bottles behind the counter.
“I’ll protect you,” Tina smiled winking at James.
As they sat down, a heavily-bearded man approached them from behind the bar.
The Time Stone Page 6
