The Village (Harbingers Book 12)

by Alton Gansky

  She didn’t have a ruler, so Andi tore a strip of paper from the edge of the page and used it to mark the distance between “spokes” at the same point from the hub, the church.

  “The bar,” Andi said. “My best guess is that the next group will come from the bar.”

  “At least there won’t be any children in a bar.” That was some comfort to me but it wasn’t enough. “This is useful information, but I don’t know what to do with it.” I began pacing again. “If you’re right about the place, Andi, we still don’t have clue about the time.”

  Andi nodded slowly. “True. I don’t know how to figure that out. The time of the previous events seem random.”

  “I suppose we could move into the place and—”

  “Guys?”

  It was Brenda. I had been so absorbed in what Andi was doing that I had forgotten her. One look told me she hadn’t been sitting on her hands. She had made use of the pen Helsa had brought after Andi glommed onto the pencil. While we had been talking, Brenda was having a go at one of the other pads of paper. This could be good, or it could be bad. Brenda pushed the paper to the middle of the table. She pointed a finger at the middle of the page.

  She had drawn the front of the bar we had driven past when we came to town and I had walked past on my little hike. “Him. He’s the key. Get him and we get our answers.”

  In front of the bar stood Tockity Man and in front of Tockity Man was another figure. A big figure holding the one-eyed man with the cardboard eye patch by the throat and with his other hand he was holding Tockity’s fist. The big man was me.

  There was something else in the drawing: a large vehicle.

  “What is that?” I tapped the image. Brenda didn’t draw the whole vehicle, just something that looked like the back end of a bus.”

  “Beats me,” Brenda said. “I just draw this stuff.”

  Helsa took a gander, furrowed her brow a little, squinted, then suddenly straightened. “It’s a bus.”

  I felt good about my guess, but why would Brenda draw the tail end of a bus.

  Helsa blinked a few times. “It’s a school bus.” Her eyes widened. “That’s it.”

  “What’s it?” I asked.

  Andi was already dialed in. “It’s our clock, Tank. It’s our clock. School buses run on a schedule.”

  “It’s headed away from the school,” Helsa said. “So that means school is out. I’ll be right back.”

  Helsa moved to a phone mounted to the wall about ten feet from us. No one had to tell me what she was doing. She was calling the school.

  The thing about Brenda and her drawings is this—she is never wrong.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Step of Faith

  I had no idea if any of this would work. It was one of those things that looked good on paper, but seemed beyond stupid when said out loud. I was desperate to do something. Too many lives had already been lost, and children who barely knew how to live were facing the death that should be limited to the old. I was older. Okay, fine. Andi and Brenda had aged, but they had already lived a good bit of life. Yet the kids in the ward knew nothing of first love, hopes, or dreams. Some were just old enough to learn to throw a ball. I had to do something and I trusted Brenda’s and Andi’s insights.

  The van we were riding in moved down the hill, driven by one of the policemen we had met when we first arrived in New Land. When we first met, he was all smiles. Now he was as sober as an undertaker. Once I told Helsa what I wanted to do, she sprang into action. Clearly, she carried some kind of weight in this strange building. When she spoke, people hopped to it.

  Helsa sat next to me in one of the van’s rear seats. I leaned toward her. “I haven’t asked this before, Littlefoot, because it reminds me of when you left us. Watching you go was as much pain as I’ve ever felt.”

  She took my hand. “I still love that name. Littlefoot. I cherish it.”

  That gave me a grin. “How did you get back here?”

  “They brought me back. The people who send you places sent me there; they brought me home.”

  “How?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s beyond me. They know more than we do. They do good for the world, several worlds.”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  She looked sad. “No, Tank, I don’t. I really don’t. So much mystery. So many unknowns.”

  “We feel the same. Still, we’ve done some good things. How did they send you to our world and bring you back?”

  “They set up a machine. I don’t think it created an opening between our worlds, but, he said it kept the doorway open.”

  “He?”

  She looked away, then said a name that sounded like Shaun or maybe Shane. I don’t think it was Shaun, but it was close.

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. After I got back, he disappeared. It took me a little time to return to my proper age. When I did, he was missing.”

  “He was part of your team?”

  She nodded. “In a way, he was much like your professor. I’m a bit like Andi. When I was my natural age again—that took about three weeks—my team was off doing the work we do. They never came back.”

  “No idea what happened to them?”

  “None, but . . . I can’t be sure, but I have a bad feeling about Shaun. I think he might be your Tockity Man.”

  That was a shocker. “What makes you think that?” I tried to keep all the surprise out of my voice. I doubt that I succeeded.

  Tears filled her eyes. “He was the one that operated the device that kept the doorway to your world open long enough for me to pass through. After my team went missing, I went to the building were we kept the device. It’s at the end of town. The device was gone.”

  “The church?” I asked.

  “It is a center for worship. Yes. Was a center for worship. The spiritual ways are not followed here as they once were.”

  “Same can be said for our world,” I said.

  “It would explain a few things if this guy made off with the equipment and brought it to our world.”

  “Again, I can’t say that’s what happened, but I fear it might be as you say.”

  “Why would he do that?” Brenda asked.

  Helsa gazed out the window for a moment. “If it is Shaun, then I think he lost his mind. It’s one of the dangers of jumping between universes. It short-circuits our brains.”

  “Tockity Man is more than a little crazy.” That may have been harsh. I patted Helsa’s hand. “This isn’t easy work. We can only do what we can do.”

  Helsa’s revelation was painful to hear and I’m sure even more painful to share. I wondered what it was like wondering what happened to a team you had spent so much time with. The thought of losing Andi and Brenda would feel like someone doing surgery on me with a butter knife.

  * * *

  We arrived in front of the building that corresponded to the bar in our Newland, except here, best I could tell, it was more of a juice bar.

  Helsa spoke to her driver, who repeated the words over the radio. The patrol cars that had followed us back into town blocked off the road. Other patrol cars, probably teams already on duty, were stationed along the street. Officers slipped from the vehicles and moved to the bar, walked through the door. Moments later patrons exited, looking confused. So did one man who I took to be the owner. He was less than happy.

  “You ready to rock-and-roll, Cowboy?” Brenda sounded confident. I’m pretty sure she was faking it.

  “No, but let’s do this anyway.”

  The moment we were outside the van, I heard Helsa: “Tank.”

  She rushed me and threw her arms around my neck, kissed me on both cheeks, then stepped back. “If it is Shaun and if he has the transport mechanism, then he’ll have an activator. It looks like a small red fruit. Don’t let him use it, or everything will be for nothing.”

  I carried a long coil of rope into the business. I had been right. It was a juice bar.


  Dropping the coil of rope on the floor, I pulled one end up and tied it around my waist. A uniformed officer tied the other end to a stool bolted to the floor. We had a plan. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was the only plan we could come up with. We had a likely location for the next set of abductees. Andi figured that out. Brenda’s future-drawing power had taken the next step giving us a pretty good time and placing me at the scene with Tockity. Since Brenda’s drawing showed me mixing it up with the one-eyed crazy man in this universe, it meant I somehow needed to bring him here. All we had to do was get to the bar before the event.

  “I hope this works,” I said. “If it doesn’t, then you guys will never let me forget it.”

  “You got that right, Cowboy.” I turned to see Brenda grinning. That did me a lot of good. She could fill a room with laughter or suck all the air out of it with just a few words. Love that girl.

  When we were dragged from our world we were sitting in a café booth. I didn’t see anything like a portal or door, but then again I was looking at my breakfast. I hoped I would recognize it when it arrived. I scanned the interior of the juice bar with its blenders, brightly upholstered seats, and artwork of some strange looking fruit on the walls. We moved the small tables and chairs from the middle of the floor. I figured if I stood in the centered of the room I would have the shortest possible distance to anything that appeared in the room.

  A light flashed in my eyes, the same kind of light that flashed in my head when we were transported here. Problem. The light didn’t form a structure like a door or anything. It was just a glow that filled almost half of the space in the juice bar. I hesitated, wondering where to enter.

  Then I got a break: two or three confused and shaken people emerged from the center of the glow. I didn’t hesitate. I charge the point where I had seen them materialize. I might have only a moment. I hoped that I wouldn’t run through it and slam into the wall.

  I didn’t.

  The light that surrounded me now filled me. And it hurt. Big time pain. I may have screamed. If I did, I didn’t hear it.

  Then the light was gone and I was doubled over but standing on a floor covered in peanut shells.

  The bar.

  “Tockity, tockity, tick—”

  I straightened, and saw the scruffy man with the Corn Flakes eye patch. A moment later, I had him by the throat. He had something in his right hand. It looked like the device Helsa described. With my freehand I clamped my big mitt around his hand and squeezed until I was sure I had control of all his fingers. His face twisted in pain and it told me I had accomplished that part of my goal.

  “Is your name Shaun?”

  He looked surprised, then confused, then I drove my forehead into his face. He stopped struggling.

  I released his throat, and took hold of the front of his filthy coat. The rope around my waist served as my guide back to portal. All I had to do was make sure that Tockity didn’t regain consciousness and wiggle his hand with the activator free. If he did, and he might close the gateway with me on this side, and my friends on the other; my friends and all those old kids who needed help. I dragged him along as if he were a doll. I’ll admit it. I was a little pumped up on adrenaline and fear. A few steps later we were back in the other universe.

  * * *

  I dragged the unconscious Tockity Man to the side of the juice bar, ordering some patrons who had been snatched from the liquor bar out of the way. It was natural that they would be confused, but the liquor wasn’t doing them any favors.

  “Back. Go back.” Helsa was loud and forceful. Still they—six men and two women—wasn’t sure it was a wise idea. Helsa stepped to the spot where I had crossed over and pointed. “Go! Run!”

  They stood still, confused into inaction.

  “NOW!” That was Brenda. She was more convincing. They followed the police officer’s directions if for no other reason than to save their hearing from another Brenda outburst.

  I pinned Tockity to the wall. He was still out of it, but he could come to anytime and I was afraid of letting go of his hand. I wanted the threshold open as long as possible.

  Helsa was overseeing the rest of the plan. Officers and nurses poured through the door of the juice bar helping elderly patients into the light. Some were on gurneys, some hobbled, some were carried by police officers. None of the helpers questioned Helsa when she told them to carry their patients into the light, turn around and come right back.

  “Brenda, Daniel, go through. Take charge over there.” They exchanged glances and marched through. “You too, Andi.”

  “I’m not leaving you, Tank.”

  “Andi, please, just go. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Go, those kids need help. Go.”

  She went.

  Moments later helpers were returning, shaken, pale, and few vomiting, but they kept at it. Time and time again, they carried patients into the white void until every elderly child had crossed over. Helsa spit out orders like a drill sergeant. Based on the way I felt, I guessed those brave souls might need a few days off.

  Tockity came to in a fury. His fingernails dug into my face. His knee caught me in the groin. I was already half out of things from traveling through the opening twice in short order. I didn’t need such treatment.

  Some of the officers came to my aide. We took him to the floor, pinned his right arm and slowly pried his fingers back until I held what looked like a small, glowing red apple. It had a switch on it. Tockity had it pressed when I grabbed his hand so I kept it pressed.

  “Easy with that, Tank. It’s your only way home.”

  I released Tockity to the cops. Stood. Wobbled a little and did my best to keep the contents of my stomach right where they were.

  “Go, Tank,” Helsa said.

  “I need a minute with you.”

  “No. The activator could stop working. It’s not in the same universe as the device it controls. Go. Go now.”

  I had already watched Helsa—Littlefoot—fade in front of my eyes, so I didn’t want to say good-bye again.

  “Helsa-”

  “Shut up. I can’t go with you and you can’t stay here. If either one of us tries, then we die. Go. Your friends need you.”

  I walked to the light and looked back.

  “Keep up the good work, Tank,” she said. “You’re a hero. You’re my hero.”

  My vision blurred. My face was hot.

  I walked through the light.

  I was weeping when I emerged back in my own world. I don’t care who knows it.

  Epilogue

  It took several tries, but we were able to take the door to the church down. The sledgehammers we carried made it easy. With me were several men from Newland, each had a sledgehammer that he either brought from home or had been given by the owner of the hardware store. He was with us, too. After all, he had lost his wife, but got his eight-year-old daughter back. There were ten of us, all total, and each had a similar story.

  I felt a little bad about breaking into a church, even one that had been abandoned a long time ago. Still, a church is a group of believers, not a building, so I put my reservations aside and helped knock the door in.

  We found the device that bridged the two universes. The sanctuary had no pews. It was a wide open space with the device. It was an odd looking duck. It reminded me of some bit of abstract sculpture. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe something sleek and shiny. It wasn’t sleek. It looked like a golf ball but instead of all those little indentations it was covered in little metal bumps. It wasn’t shiny either. I could tell it was metal but it lacked the luster of aluminum. It looked a tad corroded. I doubt Tockity took care of his toys.

  It rested on a set of wood blocks. High tech meets low tech. An electrical line ran from the bottom of the sphere and had been wired into a junction box in one of the walls.

  I wondered how it worked but only for a few moments. I had other plans for the thing.

  It was a little difficult to explain all that happened to the o
thers, but since we had brought many of their children back they would have believed us if we had said the moon was made of chocolate.

  We waited as Walter, the local electrician, disengaged the power to the unit, then I removed a small paper sack from my pocket, opened it, and removed a slip of paper with a name on it. It was no secret that we had come to destroy the thing but it needed to be done with some dignity, not like a crazed mob. These people needed to a have a hand in ending the problem. This was the best idea I could come up with. Tiffany knew everyone who had lost loved ones. She put us in contact with them. When I told them what I had in mind, not a man said no.

  I want to make sure everyone got a good whack at the thing. So, I wrote their names on slips of paper, got a brown paper lunch bag, dumped them in and created my own little lottery.

  “Gerald Ames.”

  Gerald grinned, but he did so with tears in his eyes. He got his son back, but was shaken to the core to see what had happened to the boy. They were all shaken. It took awhile, but we convinced them that the impossible would happen and their children would grow young again. Those who didn’t get their kids back, well, we couldn’t do anything but weep with them. And we did a lot of that.

  The group of men stepped away to give Gerald a little room and Gerald gave it all he had. He was in his forties, but looked to me like he was well acquainted with hard work. The business end of the sledge struck a devastating first blow.

  A cheer went up.

  Gerald folded over in tears and regret. Several men went to his side while I pulled another name from the bag. “Jensen P. Monroe. You ready, brother?”

  “More ready than I can say.” He recited the name of his two children who had been returned to him, then the names of his neighbor’s children who were forever gone, then he put every fiber of this body into his swing. The sound of it hurt my ears.