The cement cylinder beneath the drain stank of rotting leaves. He pawed through the muck until he found his Logan Earth Ski skateboard, which he’d “accidentally” rolled into the drain the day before. Not until Scott and skateboard were safely inside the tunnel pointing toward Oakwood’s main street did he risk a light. The flashlight’s beam cast long, haunting shadows. For the first time that night, a morgue-like fear filled Scott’s insides.
Can’t believe I’m doing this again.
His destination was the same as in December — the tunnel that opened onto the culvert — but he was propelling himself toward it from the opposite direction. Five minutes later, he emerged, his hair matted with cold perspiration. Leaving his skateboard in the tunnel this time, he crab-walked down the culvert on fingertips and toes. The houses on both sides loomed in silence. At the Leonards’ chain-link fence, Scott scaled the slanting cement wall.
Something skittered up the wall after him. When it curled between Scott’s legs, he bit back a scream. It wasn’t until the thing pushed its head against his arm and purred as loudly as an idling lawnmower that Scott recognized it — or rather, her.
“Tiger?” he whispered.
He tried to coax the Graystones’ cat down the wall with a little pressure to her ribcage, but Tiger tensed and kept her footing. She made another pass between Scott’s legs, this time with a small meow.
“Shh,” Scott whispered, peering around. This was the last thing he needed. He climbed the fence close to a post, where the fence wouldn’t rattle, and eased down the other side. Maybe Tiger wouldn’t follow. He peeked back in time to see her leap up, walk a short way along the metal bar, and then leap down, the bell on her collar giving a small jingle. She pattered through the grass after him.
Scott made a shooing gesture, but Tiger wasn’t a dog. She continued, undeterred.
When Scott reached the shed, he was surprised to find it unlocked. He slipped inside and closed the door just as Tiger’s face appeared in the doorway. He waited a moment, then clicked on the flashlight.
The shed had been cleaned out, the kindling removed. Scott shone the light over the wooden shelves, all bare. The cleanliness of the shed told Scott it had been investigated, every item picked over and studied, and then bagged for further analysis — including scrapings of his blood, apparently. Even the plywood that had once covered the floor was gone. The hatch and square control panel sat in plain sight, but a taut chain, anchored by four large eye screws, crisscrossed the hatch. A brass-colored padlock glinted in the flashlight’s beam.
Scott picked the lock open in less than a minute.
Holding his breath, he drew the chain away with his gloved hands, wincing at every hollow clank. Scott closed his eyes and focused toward the keypad. No current. The circuit was dead. He opened his eyes and pulled open the hatch, standing it on its hinges. He shone the flashlight past the descending rebar rungs, illuminating a familiar basement room.
Could he assume the passive detection field was inactive, too? So far, his findings were consistent with what he had come to believe. The Leonard Creep Show had been shut down, which explained the unlocked shed, the exposed hatch, the disabled magnetic lock…
What about the chain and padlock?
Scott shifted his small beam of light to the pile of chain. Of course the investigators had secured the hatch. They didn’t want some neighborhood kid wandering in and throwing open the lid, only to fall fifteen feet to a cement floor. It suggested standard procedure, not Super Secret Organization. Anyway, without a current, the passive detection field was inoperable. Any kind of battery backup would have run out of juice long before.
Satisfied with his reasoning, Scott stepped into the cement cylinder and climbed down. In the room below, he took his flashlight from his mouth and shone the beam around. The cabinets he’d seen the last time were gone. He followed the corridor to the monitoring room.
Except for the bolts and brackets that had once held twelve black-and-white monitors, the room was naked. Missing, too, was the control panel with its dials, as well as the log book and the military phone. All that remained was the shelf-like desk, still bolted to the wall, and a square of balding carpet underneath. The investigators had even removed the chair. Scott shivered as he remembered its squeaking casters and Mr. Leonard’s hastening footfalls.
Scott aimed his light along the far corridor, where Mr. Leonard had entered that December morning. Setting his bag beneath the shelf-desk, he began to creep after his beam. There probably wasn’t a great need for stealth, not like the last time — after all, it was one thirty in the morning and the house above was vacant — but something about the secret, subterranean world Scott had climbed into, something about the circumstances, seemed to demand it. Even the smallest scuff of his shoe echoed off the cold cement like the most damning incrimination.
Partway down the corridor, a room opened on Scott’s left. He fully expected to find a switchboard cabinet, the room being in closest proximity to where he’d seen the military phone.
But the small room was empty.
As Scott stepped inside, the acoustics made it feel as if the walls were breathing around him. Affixed to two of the walls were what appeared to be large, flat cages. Scott approached one. The cage creaked when he pulled it open. Two rubber-capped prongs reached for the floor. What he’d mistaken for caging was the steel frame and springs of a bunk rack.
Scott examined the frame, which glimmered in the flashlight’s beam. Not a speck of rust. He shone the light over the cement floor, then up at a pair of dark bulbs in the ceiling. Scott propped his chin on his fist, trying to make sense of the room and the newish bunks, but couldn’t. Farther down the corridor, he discovered a larger room with four more of the military-style bunk racks, two each on opposite walls.
Was Mr. Leonard having slumber parties down here? Scott swept the room with his light. Or was he prepping for World War Three?
Outlets appeared along the bottom of the wall every few feet, but whatever they’d once powered was — surprise, surprise — gone. His beam crept back to the bunks. Had people been down here the morning he broke in? Scott swallowed as he thought back. He didn’t remember seeing any light from the far corridor, didn’t remember hearing any sounds.
They could’ve been sleeping. They could’ve been—
“Chill out,” Scott whispered, his heart beating wildly.
He’d only heard a single set of footfalls that morning, and they’d belonged to Mr. Leonard. Who knew why the wackadoo had had those bunk racks installed? It certainly didn’t mean anyone was using them. Scott swept his beam over the bunks once more and then wandered from the room. The corridor ended at a flight of wooden steps that led up to the house. He considered taking a peek inside, but the house would be empty too. On two occasions in late December, he’d seen a large moving truck in the Leonards’ driveway, its back abutting the garage door.
Back in the monitoring room, Scott explored the wall around the shelf-desk.
“Bingo,” he whispered.
He shone his light into a PVC pipe embedded in the cement beneath the desk. Using his fingers as tweezers, he reached inside and drew out a cable. Wires blossomed from the end in a colorful spray.
Scott wasted no time getting his backpack open. He set his military phone on its side and, with a few firm twists of wire, connected the phone to whatever system Mr. Leonard had rigged up down here. Scott flipped a switch on the phone and held the receiver to his ear. No dial tone, but that wasn’t entirely unexpected. With the part of himself that hungered for access and distances, Scott could feel the living connection.
He concentrated, teeth grinding together, as his world compressed to a point. He could almost taste the grease and metal of the old phone. And then he was inside the phone system, shooting off in all directions.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!
He reined himself back toward the phone as electrical current burned and crackled around him. From the military phone, he felt his way al
ong the cable, expecting at any moment to discover the small box-shaped signature that had been listening in on his home phone — to all of their home phones — for the last four months. Once he established the switchboard’s presence, mission accomplished: no more Them.
However, instead of a box, Scott arrived at what felt like a small hub. From there, the current branched off in five different directions.
Not cool.
One at a time, he followed each divergent cable. They led not to switchboards but to what felt like more phones. And the cables terminated at each one, like spokes on a tire. Scott backtracked to the hub, then along the main cable to his military phone. He concentrated and, seconds later, opened his eyes.
As he did every time he left a system, Scott felt a child’s disappointment guttering in his stomach — and beneath that, a seething anger. He suppressed both emotions and recalled what he knew of military phones. Soldiers used them in battle, of course, but security-minded paranoids — like Mr. Leonard — were also known to use them for communication off the grid.
But to communicate with whom?
Military phones were only good for a few hundred meters of communication, a mile tops, so the other phones would have to be close. But how close? Scott reached into his backpack and pulled out a voice-activated tape recorder. The other thing about a network of military phones was that the connection was always open. Anyone speaking on one of the phones could be heard by all of the others.
He held the receiver to his ear again. The line was quiet, a one-forty-in-the-morning kind of quiet, but that could change over the next twenty-four hours. Scott set the recorder down, alligator-clipped it to the cable, and depressed the recorder’s power switch. The instant someone spoke, the recorder would kick to life; whatever voice data came through the cable would land on the fresh tape.
Scott pulled a roll of duct tape from his pack and secured the recorder to the underside of the desk, out of sight. With another length of tape, he affixed the cable to the wall, covering the alligator clips.
Back inside the shed, Scott lowered the hatch lid and chained and padlocked it closed. Fatigue smoldered in his eyes and draped his limbs like chains. He had been anticipating his triumphant declaration to Janis that she had nothing to fear — that he, Scott Spruel, had solved the puzzle. But, no. He had only thrown a curtain open on more questions. And to even begin to answer them, he was going to have to return the next night to retrieve the tape.
Hooray for me.
He was preparing to push the shed door open when he thought to listen through it.
Terror blew his weariness to dust. The footfalls crossing the lawn were soft, but their weight and cadence were all too human. And they were coming toward him.
Scott swung his beam toward the hatch door before remembering he’d replaced the chain. The time required to remove the chain, not to mention the noise it would make…
No, not an option.
He stood the flashlight bulb-end down on the cement floor and slipped his pack off. His eyes felt lemur sized in the scant light. The footsteps came nearer. Scott fought with the backpack’s zipper before getting it open. My suit, I need my suit! He dug as quietly as he could. He had the helmet in both hands when the footsteps paused mere feet from the door.
Someone chuckled, then spoke in a murmur — a man’s voice. Purrs bubbled into Scott’s hearing. The man had stopped to pet Tiger.
All right, kitty, just buy me a minute here. One minute to lock the shed door.
It took Scott ten seconds to select the tension wrench and pick from his wallet and insert both into the door’s lock. Did he remember the sequence? The first two pins he chose stuck along the shear line. A third pin followed. Outside, the purring and occasional murmuring continued. Something in the texture of the voice sounded familiar to Scott, but he couldn’t think about that now. He chose a fourth pin, and then — when the others didn’t fall out — pushed the fifth pin home with confidence. Tiger mewled softly, a question, and the footsteps resumed.
Just have to turn the damn wrench the right way this time.
Eyelids pressed tight, heart pounding, Scott eased the tension wrench to the left.
The footsteps stopped outside. The shed doors creaked, then strained against one another.
Scott nearly collapsed in relief. He had turned it the right way. The bolt had slid home.
The mysterious visitor tried the doors again. Then he stood there. Oh, god, please don’t have a key. A minute passed before the footsteps departed in the direction of the gate leading to the Leonards’ driveway. Scott waited another five minutes before unlocking the shed door and stealing home by way of the storm drains.
13
Graystone cul-de-sac
Saturday, February 2, 1985
8:16 p.m.
“So we’re breaking up?”
“No, I…” Janis resisted pulling a strand of hair around to her nose. “It’s not a breakup. It’s just a break.”
“I don’t understand.”
In the bluish light of the console, Blake’s face appeared wan. Not an hour earlier, they’d been sitting across from the other at Mr. Han, Janis’s favorite restaurant, celebrating her fifteenth birthday. They joked about the names of their dishes; they fumbled with the chopsticks; they laughed honest laughter. For the first time since the stabbing, Janis had begun to feel like her old self. The plan had been for Blake to join her and her family for birthday cake at home afterward.
But they never made it inside. When Blake pulled the emergency brake and leaned toward her, Janis had stopped him.
Kissing him suddenly felt dishonest.
“I don’t understand either,” she said after a moment.
“Then talk it out. Talk to me.” Blake’s indigo eyes implored her.
Janis looked down where her fingers fidgeted with the zipper on her letter jacket. “What happened in December, Blake… I thought after coming home from Denver, life would go back to normal — not right away, but eventually, you know? Like one of those snow globes that gets shaken up but then the flakes settle. But everything’s as chaotic as ever.”
“You mean the attention at school?”
“Yeah, that. But it’s more than that. There’s this never-ending investigation, there’s my parents…”
Blake’s brows drew together. “What about your parents?”
Janis peeked toward her house. Her parents were inside, her father probably in his study, her mother spreading the special checkered tablecloth reserved for birthdays over the kitchen table. Janis hadn’t meant to open that door. “It’s nothing.” She shook her head. “It’s just…” She glanced up at Blake, who continued frowning with concern. “They don’t talk anymore.”
“At all?”
“I mean, they talk but not like they used to. They talk because they have to.”
Blake’s fingers climbed into the hair above the back of her neck, and she felt the warmth of his hand against her skin. She tensed briefly, then closed her eyes. In the next moment, she was against his shoulder. A whisper of Drakkar Noir mingled with the comforting scent of his leather jacket.
“Your parents have been through a lot, too,” he murmured through her hair. “It’s going to be all right.”
Her father spent most evenings in his study with the door closed. Occasionally, she could hear him on his phone, his muffled voice low and stern, like it had sounded that night in Denver. And her mother, when not performing her domestic duties, burrowed deeper into her studies. She had registered for three college courses that semester, in defiance of Janis’s father. The original agreement had been for her to take one at a time, two tops.
“I want to see you through this,” Blake said.
“I know, but it’s not that easy.” There’s Amy.
All week, Janis had been planning to defy her, to dare her to go to Agent Steel with her story of being blasted at Dress-up Night. But what would Amy do if pushed? There had been her strange talk about Janis being “Little Mis
s Perfect,” about wanting her to suffer.
And Janis remembered the disturbing shadow that had flitted behind Amy’s eyes.
Janis examined the ring hugging her finger. The most honest course would be to explain it all to Blake, starting from the beginning: her powers, Mr. Leonard’s warning, Agent Steel, Amy’s threat. So you see, we just have to pretend to be broken up until the investigation ends and Agent Steel says so long. Otherwise, she’ll know about my powers. She’ll dig deeper with her investigation, threatening me, threatening Scott, pushing my parents further to the brink. Janis thought about the strange men she’d spied at the assembly the previous week. She thought about the Leonards’ warnings and her own recurring nightmare. Beyond the windshield and up the street, Scott’s bedroom window shone like a faint penlight.
Janis’s gaze fell to the gray knit gloves she’d set on the dashboard. If she came clean, Blake would want some kind of proof. But, absent emotional distress, Janis hadn’t been able to summon her powers at will. Would this time be any different? She squinted as she concentrated on the leftmost glove. Slowly, the smell of the sea grew inside her nose. Her skin tingled.
It’s happening…
The first finger of the glove vibrated, then jerked.
It’s working!
Janis felt herself conjoining with the glove, as though the space separating them was filled with living threads. The second finger of the glove began hopping, then the third. Soon, the entire glove looked like something out of a Herbie Hancock video.
Blake’s eyes must have been closed because he didn’t move; his breathing above her remained even.
At last, the glove slid from the dashboard and fell into the footwell, out of sight.
“Maybe you’re making it harder than it needs to be,” Blake said.
Janis leaned away. “What do you mean?”
“It’s something I’ve noticed about you. When you’re upset, you turn away from those who care about you, who want to help the most. It’s like you’d rather take on the world alone. And that’s what I’m telling you. You don’t have to.”
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 40
