by Jae Vogel
The Montebello was the local Drive-In. One of the first Drive-In movie theaters in the area. It was known as the local “cultural center” by the police who often had to visit it to break-up fights or escort kids home who tried to get inside for free.
Dion remembered driving past it with his aunt and uncle and noticed the line of cars, which ran down the road for a good mile. On some clear nights, you could even drive by close enough and see the images of whatever movie played on the screen. Only the top guys in the school could entertain bragging rights after taking their dates to The Montebello. However, the local mating games had no interest to him, as his number one goal was to locate his parents.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Lilly said. “I appreciate you thinking about me, but I’m not the girl you’re looking to find.”
“Keep it in mind,” he told her and walked away as he gave Dion a smirk while he walked past him.
“That boy has a high opinion of himself,” Lilly said to Dion. “I don’t share it. As a matter of fact, I don’t know anyone who does. You talk behind enough people’s backs and soon no one wants to have anything to do with you.”
“Our immediate problem is to locate Emily,” Dion said. ”I will say I’m glad he didn’t stick around. I don’t see him as being much help. He’s the type who would try to rush the ghouls and, as you just saw, that is exactly what they want you to do.”
“So how do we find her? We don’t have the map and the door is gone. I don’t want to wait around and let that big creep Karanzen take care of locating her.”
“Let me think about this. I don’t want to rush into anything. It could make things even worse. The ghouls won’t dare harm her. They want to use her to keep me away from the Earth Elemental Grandmaster. So long as they have her, they know we don’t dare approach her.”
“But they can’t keep her forever,” Lilly said. “Sooner or later they have to let her go or the police will get involved, and even Karanzen is scared of them.”
“Officer Karanzen is scared of nothing. The only thing he cares about is keeping this mall safe. He keeps it safe because so long as it is protected he has a job.”
“He’s the guardian,” a voice said behind them. “He takes care of the Abyss.”
They turned to see the strange little Englishman known as Edward behind them. Gone was his leisure suit. It was replaced by knee pants, a tweed cap and a short jacket. He held an unlit pipe in one hand, which he placed in his mouth.
“Remember,” Lilly said to him,” you can’t smoke in the mall.”
“I know, I know,” he said in his nasally voice. “Can we go outside? They still let you smoke in this beastly outdoors, don’t they?” He turned and looked for an exit. Seeing one, he headed for it with the two high school seniors behind him.
Once outside he inhaled the air and sat down on a bench. Edward pulled out a match, struck it on the bench and used it to light his pipe. Lit, he inhaled the fumes and let them out slowly. Now relaxed, he folded his legs under him in a way Lilly had watched yoga adepts do it on TV.
“Really can’t stand the air in that place,” he told them. “Too many people. Peasants all of them, running around like slaves at a market. You Americans, always so busy with yourselves.”
“And where do you come from?” Lilly asked him. “England?”
“Originally, but now I’m a traveler from beyond. Beyond is a boring place and I’m pleased they let me come back here from time to time. Dion has attracted all kinds of attention and it appears I get the role of his guardian angel. I’m not holy, but I do the best I can.”
“I thought I was supposed to find my own personal guardian angel?” Dion said. “I didn’t think they were sent by post.”
“You get the economy class version today,” Edward told him, as he inhaled on the pipe again. “In due time you’ll get the customized version, but right now I’m here to help. So what is it this time? They wouldn’t have sent me unless you needed help.”
“The ghouls kidnapped our friend Emily,” Lilly told him. “They know Dion doesn’t dare approach the Earth Elemental Grandmaster if he’s abandoned a friend. They even took the map we were given by Mr. Jehuti and his wife. How are we supposed to locate Emily and get her back without the map?”
“Don’t forget the door,” Dion said. “They took the door behind them when they left.”
“Oh, they used one of those temporal doors, huh?” Edward laughed. “They did want to use her to get back at you, didn’t they? Let me think about what to do.”
Edward turned and watched the setting sun and sighed. “I miss this. You do have some spectacular sunsets in this country.” He dropped to his knees and bowed.
“Hail, Ra!” he said and stood up again.
“Now about your problem,” he continued. “You do need the map, but I think you’ll find it in the trash somewhere. The ghouls don’t know what it’s for because they can’t read. They don’t speak either, but they have very good hearing and communicate by looking at each other a certain way. So why would they have the map? Simple, they took it when they seized her and have no clue as to what it can be used to for. So what you have to do is look around and see if it’s in any of the trash cans around the door they took with them.”
“But what if they took the map with them?” Dion said, “Surely they dumped it wherever they went. Does that mean we’ll have to travel all the way to the subbasement to get the map?”
“Not necessarily. They are very nimble creatures. They might’ve grabbed the map from her and dumped it before you noticed. In spite of what you might think, the ghouls are very neat creatures and don’t like to take any waste into their dwellings. Go back to the trashcans and rummage through them. You might find it there.”
“We’ll still have to go underground to get her back,” Lilly said. “How will the map help us find the way down?”
“The map will have the location of doors and passages which lead to the subbasement that the ghouls don’t know about. Find a passage they can’t possibly know about and use it. You will be able to tell it’s a passage they won’t use if the map shows it to be illuminated. The ghouls will avoid any passage with light as it hurts their eyes.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Dion laughed, “but we’re supposed to find the map in the trash, use it to travel underground in a secret passage and rescue our friend from carnivorous ghouls.”
“Don’t worry, they only eat carrion. Plenty of that for them around the mall. So long as the restaurants order too much food every day. Someday they’ll learn how to order food supplies better than what they do and the ghouls will move on. But right now, the arrangement works out for everyone.”
Edward pulled out his pocket watch again and looked at it. “Oh dear, time to go. Mustn’t overstay my allotted time, I will make them very cross with me.” He inhaled on his pipe one more time and vanished.
“So, he shows up when we’re at a hard spot?” Lilly asked Dion. “He doesn’t look like an angel.”
“I’m not certain when he’ll show up, but he’s been a help,” Dion said.
“Might as well go back in the mall. Will you be able to use your powers down in the subbasement?”
“I can use them anywhere. But I don’t have very strong ones right now. Making a column of water rise, causing a plant to grow, I can do these things, but they exhaust me.”
They walked back into the mall, passing up people as they entered it. A few of them Lilly knew, but these were not people they could share their quest to find Emily. A few of Lilly’s friends waved at her and she returned the response. Several looked at her funny, no doubt due to Dion being with her as she walked along. Dion was not one of the popular boys at the school and some of the adults in the town thought of him as a little strange. Dion’s uncle worked for the local university and taught philosophy. They didn’t blend in very well to the standard military/farmer/tradesman cliché that ran the town.
Fromatius was originally a rural farm district outsi
de of the urban Scipio. Once upon a time, the schools were small and the principal source of income was chicken farms. But, as the roads improved and the city grew congested, people with money began to move out of town. Fromatius was on the main road between Xenon, another town to the west, and Columbus, much further to the center of the state. As people moved into the area, developers saw the chance to make some cash and tossed up houses across the shrinking farms. Old timers would still talk about where the cow farms were in the past, but they shrank every year. Sometimes the farmhouse would remain and be surrounded by rows of new tract homes.
With the increase in population came the need for schools. Whereas the town once had three elementary schools and a high school, it now boasted of two high schools, four junior high schools and a chain of elementary schools. This mandated the hiring of an army of schoolteachers who moved to the town from outside the state, which created more tension between the town’s older residents and new ones. Even the school board elections, which used to be sleepy, became heated on several occasions.
Then there was the Air Force base next door. Wrought Field was established to test experimental aircraft before the Second World War, but boomed in the years after it. It wasn’t uncommon for people to put their phones down because a B-52 bomber was flying overhead. Likewise, plenty of glass windows suffered until complaints to the base commander stopped test aircraft from breaking the sound barrier over the neighborhoods. Rumors abounded about the alien from outer space in the deep part of the base, but no one at the top level would ever confirm or deny their existence. The truth was stranger and seemed to be connected to the appearance of the mall somehow.
As they walked into the mall, past the glass entrance doors, which swung in both directions, Lilly saw someone she hadn’t seen in a long time. It was Detective Charles, a friend of her dad’s. It struck her odd he was at the mall as he worked for the Scipio Police Department and seldom left his district. He’d grown up with her father and was practically an uncle to her.
“I see someone who might be able to help us,” she told Dion, after sliding up to him and trying to act as if they were a couple. “It’s a cop my dad knows who works out of the city.”
“You can’t tell him too much,” Dion said. “What is he going to do against the forces in this place?”
“You have no idea what that man has encountered in Scipio,” Lilly said. “Detective Jones is legendary down there. He’s solved more murders than anyone in the state. Dad once told me the department thinks he’s a psychic of some kind over the ways he can get information out of people. We don’t have to tell him a thing about Emily, but he might know some things that could help us. Besides, what’s he doing here in the middle of the day?”
“Okay, just be careful what you say to him.”
Detective Jones was a short man in his forties who had a fashionable beard, neatly trimmed to police specifications. The police department relaxed the dress code for him as he worked undercover. Lilly wasn’t even sure he’d want her to say hello if he was on a case, but he waved in their direction when they walked up to him.
“Little Lilly!” he said. “Getting so big! And who is this?”
“My friend, Dion. Dion, meet Detective Jones, I’ve known him all my life.”
“No need for the ‘Detective’ title. I’m off work today and shopping for a present for the wife’s birthday. Today I’m ‘Mr. Jones’.”
“So you’re not here working on a case,” Lilly said.
“Nope. Just shopping. I hate it. I usually leave the shopping to my wife most of the time. Can’t do it today and none of my daughters are around, so I decided to come by myself.”
“Why don’t you show Dion one of your tricks?” Lilly asked.
Dion, who’d been tracking the location of the trashcans, swung his head back around.
“Tricks?” he asked them.
“He’s a real magician,” she said. “All my life he’s been showing me how to perform little tricks to impress my friends.”
“Just an amateur,” the detective laughed. “I’ve had an interest in stage magic all my life. Over the past few years, I‘ve started to order tricks through the mail and try to pick up my skill level. I find that it helps build connection with the suspects during interrogation. Show them a simple card trick and it lowers the tension. One of these days, I’ll retire and build an act around it. I was always a fan of the mental tricks I used to see on TV as a kid.”
“I’d love to see one,” Dion told him with a smile.
“I just happen to have a pack of cards on me.” The detective took a step back, withdrew a standard pack of playing cards from his pocket and shuffled it several times.
After he finished shuffling the cards, he handed one to Dion. “Ace of hearts, as you notice, now please hold the card facing downward.”
As instructed Dion flipped the card over and held it down.
“Now let me look through the pack and see if I can find something that beats it,” he said. Jones shuffled his deck of cards several more times and withdrew a card. He turned it over to reveal a six of diamonds.
“Don’t think I’ve found anything to beat what you are holding. Why don’t you turn the card over and let’s try it again.”
Dion flipped the card over to reveal the card that had now transformed into a six of diamonds.
“Didn’t beat it, but at least I found an equal,” the detective laughed.
“Nice,” Dion said. “I won’t even ask you did that because you won’t want to give the trick away. You ever use your stage magic to solve crimes or get suspects to confess?”
“No, just to build rapport and confidence with people I talk with and find a way to kill time. It helps to loosen tension. If we have to go into someone’s home for instance, I can help entertain the kids while my college is interviewing someone. Works to bridge feelings to all the communities we help out.”
“I see. I know some tricks myself; would you like to see one?”
“Of course,” the detective said with eager eyes. “I’m always looking to build my repertoire. What can you show me?”
Chapter 7
“Can I have three random cards out of your pack?” Dion asked. The detective shuffled the deck and handed him a trio.
Dion smiled, took the cards and walked back over to a table where he’d sat with his friends before the encounter with the ghoul cleaners. He carefully placed the cards in a small lean-to where they supported each other on top of the table. Then he walked around the arrangement to make sure there were no air currents from any direction to blow it over.
He walked back to Jones and Lilly. “You see the cards. They came out of the same deck you handed me. You notice there are no air gusts or wind currents in this section of the mall. We’re too far away from the door to let it affect them. Right now, no one is next to the table. So would you not agree that the cards should stay in place until someone comes by and knocks them over?”
“I’d expect them to stay put, yes,” Jones agreed.
Dion folded his arms and concentrated.
This was not something he did very often. The air elementals were very difficult to summon and wouldn’t always appear when needed. They tended to be flighty and hard to control. When they did show, sometimes they performed their job a little too well. The one from early in the day had exhausted him. But for what he needed, it shouldn’t be too hard to bring one up.
He was still for a good thirty seconds until he felt one around this part of the mall. This wasn’t a large one, but enough to do what he needed. Dion concentrated and let it know he would be very grateful if the elemental could simply knock the cards over. The air elemental was intrigued and decided to help him, making Dion remember that, until he obtained his full power from the Air Elemental Grandmaster, Dion owed him a favor. Dion agreed and promised to let it out through the nearest door. With the deal sealed, the air elemental swooped in the direction of the cards.
Jones expected the cards to merely
fall over, the result of a kinetic trick Dion would set up. All he needed to do was time it out so the cards appeared to fall on his command. The detective had seen such tricks done before and, if done properly, always impressed a bar audience. But what happened here surprised him to no end.
The three cards blew up into the air by a gust of wind that sent them flying across the concourse. They landed far from each other, which forced Dion to walk over and pick them up. He walked back and returned them to the detective. While he was bringing them back, he spotted something in a nearby trashcan and made a detour toward it.
It was the map.
The ghouls had managed to dump it before they took Emily. Relieved, he rolled it up, put it under his arm, and headed back in the direction of the detective.
“That was amazing,” Jones said as Dion handed him the cards. “I have no idea how you pulled that trick off and don’t even want to ask. You have been practicing a long time?”
“All my life.”
“Do you have any idea if anyone has come up missing in this place lately?” Lilly asked Jones. “One of our friends has been gone for a few days and her mother thought she might have gone here before she left.”
“Never heard a thing about people disappearing at this mall. But it’s a new one. The one on the other side of town? Maybe, they’re having some trouble over there, always happens when you have a place where people congregate. I’ll keep an ear out and let you know if I hear anything.”
“Thank you,” Dion said. “I’m sure you have Lilly’s phone number at her parents’ house. We would appreciate it. Oh, and one other thing, when you leave could you hold the door open to the count of five?”
“Sure, any reason why?”
“Something I’m working on that involves the trick I just showed you. I think you’ll feel a gust of air at the five second mark.”
“No problem.”
Jones walked to the door, opened it and held it open for the five-second count. At the fifth count, he turned and looked at Dion with a face that said “Well?”
