by Brian Harmon
SHAME WE CAN’T ASK HIM
“I know. But I don’t know how to contact him.” And for all he knew, Father Billy didn’t want to be contacted. He wasn’t the most social person he’d ever met.
Aiden stared at him, puzzled. “Who’s he talking to?”
Eric looked up at him, distracted. “What? Oh. It’s nothing.” He checked his watch. “I wonder where my brother is. He’s supposed to be meeting us here.”
“Your brother?” Aiden looked suddenly nervous.
“He can help.”
“I’m not good at trusting people.”
“I know. It shows.”
“Does it?”
“Just a little.”
Karen’s cell phone rang. Aiden cocked his head, curious. “Big Spice Girls fan?”
Eric grunted. “It’s my wife’s phone. She won’t let me change it.”
“Why don’t you just turn the ringer off?”
“I don’t know how.” He looked at the screen and saw that it was Paul. Cutting off the annoying music, he pressed the phone to his ear and said, “Where are you?”
“Just walked in the door,” said Paul. “Where are you?”
“Upstairs. The reading rooms.”
“I’m on my way.”
Eric hung up and then took a moment to stare at the silent phone. “What the hell’s a ‘zigazig ah’ anyway?”
Aiden shrugged.
Chapter Twenty-One
Paul appeared at the doorway. “Found you.”
“Found us,” agreed Eric.
Paul froze as his eyes fell on Aiden. “And you found the kid…”
“I did.”
Paul stared at him for a minute, untrusting. “You’re not going to tase me again, are you?” Then to Eric, “He’s not going to tase me again.”
“He’s not going to tase you again.”
“Because I swear, if he tases me again…”
“He’s not going to tase you. Relax.”
To Aiden, Paul said, “You tased me.”
Aiden was staring back at Paul with equal distrust. “I did. Sorry.”
“He’s sorry,” said Eric.
“He’s sorry,” repeated Paul. “Great. That makes it a lot better.”
“I didn’t know what you two wanted,” explained Aiden. “People’ve tried to kill me. I’m a little jumpy around strangers, okay?”
Paul stared at him as if he expected him to do it again as soon as he looked away.
“Besides,” added Aiden. “I was aiming at him.”
“Just drop it,” said Eric. “I don’t know how much time we have. That fat cowboy keeps turning up everywhere I go and he’s not happy with us.”
“He was pretty pissed after you two dumped him into the bar back there,” said Paul. “Still don’t know how you did that...”
“I didn’t think he’d be overjoyed,” said Eric.
“I didn’t think he’d be going anywhere but straight to the hospital in the shape he was in. Looked like his nose was broken… But once they got him to his feet, he shook it off like it was nothing and bolted right out the door. He just shoved those bikers out of his way. I thought for a second I was going to get to watch them all kick his fat ass, but I think everyone was too confused to react.”
“No wonder he caught up with us so fast,” said Eric. In the movies, shoving a dazed cowpoke-themed villain into the midst of a bar full of burly bikers might have worked perfectly, maybe even starting an exciting brawl, but in real life, people just didn’t know how to react to the inexplicable appearance from thin air of an overweight man in western wear bleeding profusely from the snout. It was easy to imagine everyone just standing back and gaping as he stormed out the front door.
“What did you guys do to him?”
“Long story. I’ll catch you up later.” Turning to Aiden, he said, “You need to tell us what you know before we’re interrupted again.”
Aiden looked from Eric to Paul and back again, then shrugged. “Guess I don’t have anything to lose.”
“We’re on the same side,” Eric assured him.
“Same side…” Aiden grumbled as he smoothed out the map across the table. “Sure…”
Paul glanced at Eric, his eyebrow raised.
Aiden paused for a moment, as if he’d forgotten what he was doing, then he ran his hands across the map twice more. “Creek Bend…” he muttered. He withdrew the photograph of the symbol with the poem from his backpack and placed it on top of the map.
Paul bent over the table and read the words that were written in the spiral. “‘Six stand guard where the water turns…’”
“‘…seen by few, each points the way home,’” finished Aiden. He shifted restlessly from side to side and glanced at the doorway again.
“Six unseen buildings in Creek Bend,” said Eric, “Each one with some sort of setup showing us that tower.”
Aiden nodded and slid the photograph aside. Pointing to the hole in the map where the screw was inserted into the table, he said, “This is Big Brooke Tavern. The table in that apartment was standing so that this map was lined up with the compass. The top pointed north, the bottom south. The table was also lined up so that this point on the map was at the very center of that room. I put screws in the centers of both of the symbols on the walls and I ran a string from each of those screws to one right here. That gave me the direction. The first three numbers on each of those symbols was the exact distance in hundredths of miles to the next unseen location in that direction.” He took both his index fingers and traced two lines simultaneously from the hole in the map to the next circled location in each direction until he was pointing at the asylum and the store next to Gertie’s. “Zero-point-eight-nine miles and zero-point-eight-three miles.”
Eric nodded. It made sense, he guessed, but it all sounded exceedingly convoluted. What was the point?
Taking his hands off the map, Aiden next withdrew a small stack of photographs from the plastic bag and dropped them onto the table. “These are all the symbols from all six of the unseen structures in this town.”
“There are seven places circled on this map,” observed Paul.
Aiden pointed impatiently to the red circle and X over Hosler Avenue. “This isn’t one of them. There are no symbols there. That place has nothing to do with any of this as far as I know. The only connection to the others seems to be that it just happens to be unseen and in the same area. A coincidence.”
Eric bent over the map. “Wait…then there’s one I haven’t been to yet.” He examined the locations and then pointed to the southernmost circled location. “That one.”
“It’s just an abandoned house. The clues are in the attic. I’ve already documented them. No reason to go there.”
Eric nodded. “Besides, those creeps keep showing up every time we go to one of those places. It’s probably a good idea to stay clear of them.”
“If you say so,” said Paul.
“Some of these symbols point to each other, obviously,” continued Aiden. “They overlap.” He pointed to the tavern and the asylum. “Both of these places have symbols that point to each other, with the exact same distance given at the beginning of the clue.”
“Makes sense,” said Eric.
“Okay,” said Paul. “So the symbols were like road signs, pointing the way to the next place in either direction and making a big circle around town. Got it. So what about that tower Eric keeps seeing?”
“Getting there,” grumbled Aiden. “Each location also has some kind of setup pointing to the final unseen structure.”
“That tower,” said Paul.
“I think it’s a schoolhouse,” said Aiden. “You can see more of the roof from the attic of that house I was just talking about.”
“How does a schoolhouse go missing?” Paul asked.
“How does anyplace go missing?” countered Eric.
Aiden shook his head. “I don’t have all the answers. Glen thought that sometimes maybe it was people who make p
laces unseen. Like, as a society. Ignore a place long enough and pretty soon it’s like it’s not even there. Or like if a place gets forgotten about for long enough. Or if everyone has a reason to want badly enough to forget it.”
“Or cranky spirits,” added Eric.
“Them, too,” agreed Aiden.
“Spirits?” asked Paul.
“Angry ghosts make places unseen, too,” Eric explained.
Aiden was impatient. “Yes. But when there aren’t any malicious spirits, we suspected it was living people who turned a place unseen. We never knew for sure. But whatever the reason, Glen was convinced that these places hid some kind of profound secret of the universe, if only we could figure out how to see it.”
Paul looked at Eric. “Who’s Glen?”
“Just a friend who’s not here anymore,” snapped Aiden. “Can we get on with it?”
Paul frowned at him. “Sorry. Please continue.”
“Wait,” said Eric. “I saw the schoolhouse from these three locations.” He pointed to the tavern, the store and the asylum. “But I didn’t see it from the motel or the restaurant. Where was it?”
“At the motel it was in the room with the boarded up windows.”
“The one that was too dark to see in,” recalled Eric.
“Right. Shortly before he was killed, Glen covered it up. He also destroyed the symbols on the walls. He was going to erase them all, at every location…but then they found him.”
Paul looked at Eric. “Who found him?”
Eric shook his head. “Later.” He didn’t want to make Aiden retell what happed to his friend, but more importantly, he wanted to speed this conversation along. “What about the restaurant?”
“It was in the glass.”
“The glass?”
“The windows that were painted black. Except for a little circle in the middle of each. It worked just like the two holes in the plywood at the apartment.” Aiden cocked his head. “Didn’t he look through the holes?”
Paul looked from Eric to Aiden and back again. “He who?”
Eric waved his hand dismissively. “I didn’t see any painted glass.”
“Really? How’d he miss it?”
Eric considered it. “There was a broken window.” Then he recalled the broken partition glass, too. “Two of them, actually.”
“Someone broke it?”
“I guess so. That cowboy, maybe?”
Aiden considered this. “…destroy it?” he muttered.
Eric cocked his head. “What?”
But Aiden didn’t seem to be listening. He muttered something to himself and began pacing around again.
“Aiden?”
Aiden shook his head. “Nothing. That cowboy…?” Fixing his eyes on Eric again, he said, “Does he think he was trying to keep him from finding the clue?”
Paul looked around the room. “Dude, who are you talking to?”
Aiden blinked at him. “What?”
“You keep saying ‘he,’ instead of ‘you.’”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
Aiden looked at Eric. “Do I?”
Eric gave him a shrug. “You do, actually.”
“It’s kind of weird,” said Paul.
Aiden looked embarrassed and confused.
“You’ve been alone a long time, haven’t you?” asked Eric.
Aiden looked down at the map. “I can’t exactly go out and socialize, can I?”
“I guess not.” Eric looked crossly at Paul.
Paul gave him another of his “what?” expressions.
“You guys are the first people I’ve said more than a few words to since Glen died. I usually keep hidden. I only go out when I have to. I don’t talk to people. I don’t even make eye contact. I don’t think the people who killed Glen ever knew I was there. I think he died keeping me a secret. But that doesn’t mean they won’t find me if I’m not careful.” He glanced up at Eric again. “But sometimes I can hardly stand it. I’ll find a place where I’m hidden and just…look out at the world. I watch people go by. I listen to their conversations. I try to glimpse their lives.”
“That can’t be easy,” considered Eric.
Isabelle texted him: IT’S LONELY. I KNOW
All the time she spent alone in that terrible Altrusk house… Eric imagined that she knew that kind of loneliness all too well. But at least she was immune to the passage of time. For more than three and a half decades, she watched her parents grow older but never felt a day go by, leaving her far wiser than the thirteen-year-old girl who went missing all those years ago, but otherwise no different. Aiden, on the other hand, was robbed of the remainder of his childhood. He grew older. He felt the hours and days and weeks pass by in a way that wasn’t possible for her in her strange prison.
Aiden gave a short, humorless laugh. “I never really thought about it before, but I guess I kind of lost track of the word ‘you’ somewhere along the way. There’s me and there’s them, the people I see passing by. He. She. They. Never a ‘you’ anymore. It’s kind of funny.”
IT’S SAD. I FEEL BAD FOR HIM
Eric felt bad for him, too. He was leading a very unenviable life. He couldn’t imagine living that way for a single week, much less the long years since he lost Glen.
“Anyway…” said Aiden, shuffling through the photographs again. “We don’t have time for this.”
“You’re right,” said Eric. “Back to business. So this cowboy guy is trying to erase all the clues. It doesn’t matter. You’ve already collected them.”
Aiden nodded and stood up straight, refocusing himself. “Yes. Right. I have. And we don’t even need those things. The next number on each of the symbols is a measurement. It’s a degree that exactly matches the angle of the line of sight between the location it points to and the schoolhouse.”
“Seems redundant,” said Paul. “Why put the number on the symbol and set up one of those things?”
Aiden nodded. “They’re designed to give you a glimpse of what you’re looking for, I think. They show us where we’re supposed to go.”
“Well,” said Paul, “why don’t we just go see this schoolhouse then?”
Aiden shook his head. “That’s the problem. Although I’ve been to all six of these places and seen the schoolhouse from every one of them, I can’t find it anywhere.”
“You have the numbers right here,” said Paul. “You have the starting point and a precise measurement of the direction. All you’re missing is the distance. Why not just triangulate the location?”
“I did. That’s what these lines are that I drew out from all six of the unseen buildings.”
Eric and Paul bent over the map. None of the lines crossed at the same point.
“That’s impossible,” said Eric. “You must’ve done it wrong.”
“I’ve run the numbers hundreds of times. Literally. These lines represent the exact line of sight between each location and that school. But it’s like it’s in a different place depending on where you’re standing when you look at it.”
“Huh,” said Paul.
Eric was stumped, too.
The three of them stood for a moment, considering this. In the silence that remained, they heard the sound of approaching footsteps.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Aiden reached for the Taser.
Eric pressed a finger to his mouth and all three of them stepped back against the wall, out of the open doorway.
The footsteps grew louder, the distinct clacking of hard heels on tile. Were those cowboy boots?
Eric leaned toward the door, craning his neck to see.
Aiden stood rigid, the Taser gripped in both hands, his eyes wide.
Eric held up his hand. “Wait,” the gesture said. He leaned a little farther…almost…
The woman walked by the door without glancing in, the loud clack-clack-clack of her high heels receding after her.
All three of them relaxed.
Paul chuckled. “Yo
u guys are really wired.”
“Well, there is a deranged redneck trying to kill us,” said Eric. He could still feel his heart thumping in this chest.
Paul glanced out the door. “Well, I don’t think the librarian’s got it in for either of you.”
Eric was starting to understand why Aiden chose to shoot first back at the store. He’d only been at this for a few hours and he was already on edge. What would six years of this kind of stress do to a person?
Aiden walked back over to the map and looked down at it.
Eric joined him. “You said that Glen thought the schoolhouse was spawning these other places?”
“Yeah. A sort of alpha structure. It was just a theory, but it might explain why you’d get such a cluster of unseen buildings in one place.”
Eric considered this. “If it’s a special enough site that it can create more like it, maybe it’s special enough to be even more unseen than the others.”
“Makes sense,” agreed Aiden. “And obviously something is going on… But it doesn’t explain why it seems to be in six different places.”
“There’s got to be something you’re not seeing,” decided Paul.
“Obviously,” replied Aiden.
“You know what I mean.”
Aiden picked up the photographs of the symbols. “We don’t know what all the numbers on each of these clues are yet. The first three numbers tell the distance in miles to the next structure. The next five tell the direction, in degrees, from the middle of the room containing the symbol in that next structure, to the schoolhouse. Because every structure has two symbols pointing to it, there’s always two numbers that match, just like with the first number. The same with the third number. This one seems to be another distance, again in miles. I didn’t draw it on this map, just to be safe, but if I treat that number like a radius measurement and draw a circle around the location the symbol points to, every circle converges at a single location here in the far northeast corner of the map, near the edge of town.”
