Extraordinary Lies

by Jennifer Alsever

  The memory came to me in jagged pictures.

  Aunt Sabrina screaming at Grandfather as the fire raged behind her. Me, terrified, springing out the back door and running to tell my parents about the fire. Yes.

  Mother shooed me away, but Father heard me.

  The rest of the memory is whole. Together we stood above the lake, watching the flames devour the house. Soot dabbed Grandfather’s face, and he leaned over and coughed a hundred yards away. Aunt Sabrina stood in front of the house, her back to us, a small figure admiring her fiery power.

  Until then, the memory had been nothing more than a fuzzy jigsaw puzzle; I could never recall the exact events of that night. I was just a kid.

  “You sent her away,” I said now, ripping my arm from his grip. My voice box unfolded, creaking and rusty, and my words roared. “She wanted a voice, but you shut her up.”

  Taken aback, he gazed at me for a long moment. “Get out of my plane and back to your dormitory. You are not going anywhere, my dear, unless I say.”

  38

  Charley

  After Cord’s mind-blowing kiss, I decided this whole thing had gone too far. That morning, I called Henry. He picked up but brushed me off, saying he had to run. A few minutes later, I banged on his door. No answer. That guy ditched me. Slipped away like a snake in the grass. Frustrated, I put my forehead onto the door and dug my hands into my jean pockets. My fingers wrapped around a dirty tissue, a gum wrapper, and … two hairpins. Once I felt them, I perked up immediately.

  After managing the quick twist and turn method Henry had shown us, the lock clicked open, and I stepped into his room. I eyed the unmade bed with twisted sheets and the clothes piled by the window. It smelled like hot dogs and maybe … cat pee? It certainly hadn’t smelled this bad when I spent time with him earlier.

  I sat down at the small wooden desk and, curious, flipped through the messy lot of books and papers: a notebook with scribbled writing about experiments he’d witnessed. A couple books, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and another titled Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary. The titles surprised me, but then, when Henry and I were hanging out together, it was never to discuss literature.

  I made myself more comfortable, rifling through drawers, and decided that snooping was my payment for doing all that crap for him. The lying, the meddling. He owed me.

  In the bottom drawer, I found a paper train schedule listing train numbers, departures, and end destinations: San Francisco to Chicago, to Denver, to Burlington, and then one curious stop at Mandaree, North Dakota.

  I sucked in a breath, popped up from the chair, and stumbled backwards. “Holy smokes!” I said, grasping the paper. I rummaged to find some other clue of what the hell was located in Mandaree but found nothing relevant. A Chinese restaurant menu. A copy of the San Francisco Chronicle. A baggie of weed. (I quickly shoved that into my pocket.) Then, after rummaging through tiny slips of paper, I came to a small business card. It was white with black block lettering: Annie Holmes, Fairmont Industries, and a phone number.

  I ran my fingertips over the name Annie and felt all the rush of familiarity. Annie, the beehive woman whose aura I’d read in the Dungeon. The woman who hid dark secrets behind silk blouses and cups of coffee in a formal office. The woman whose aura included piles of crushed bones.

  It felt like a hand just reached inside my stomach, found all the soft organs and twisted. I held the card by the edges and picked up the telephone and dialed the number on the front. It rang and rang, but no one answered. I gripped the phone, hanging up, dialing again, letting it ring. I called twice more, while inhaling the faint scent of Henry’s skin on the receiver. A mixture of weed and leather. The smell of temptation, disgust, and danger.

  Nothing.

  I hung up and dashed out the door. If this secret was unfolding the way I figured, that woman Annie could not come close to Cord. No one could come close to him. Not Henry, not Annie, not Dr. Carrillo. He was the one good thing left in that place, now that Julia was gone. A lone lamppost in a mess of darkness.

  From the dormitory, I ran all the way across campus, breathless, my lungs aching until I reached SRI. I barreled into the lobby at full speed and practically knocked over Julia, who counted a handful of coins for the vending machine.

  “Julia!” My sneakers squeaked on the floor as I stopped.

  She grasped my arms so I didn’t tip over. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re back! Thank God!” I struggled to catch my breath.

  “Uh, yeah. Looks like it,” she said with eyebrows raised.

  “You were supposed to be on the plane.”

  “My grandfather showed up and shut it down.” Her face flickered, showing a bit of her old malleable, submissive self. “We’re the last ones standing here. We’re like the sole survivors in a horror movie.”

  “Where’s Cord?”

  “He left the program. I told you. We’re the last ones.”

  My chest constricted. “Did he go home?” I asked the question, but I knew it wasn’t the case. It was hopeful thinking.

  “No, Henry said there was a new program being opened elsewhere. He told him they were training people for the military.”

  My breakfast threatened to make its way back up my throat. “No…” I mumbled. Cord left, and I had made him leave. I was the one who put that little nugget of a lie in his head that made him believe Henry. I told him to trust me.

  Julia stepped toward the stairs leading to the Dungeon. “Hey, I gotta go. I agreed to do the testing finally.”

  “Wait. You can’t—”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This.” I thrust the train schedule out for her to see. “This is what’s wrong.”

  She squinted at it, confused.

  I pointed at the word Mandaree on the schedule. “Look. This is the place that Henry is taking everyone. I know it.”

  “No,” she said, gazing at the schedule. Her eyebrows flickered, and I knew she did believe. She knew her aunt was there. She knew Henry was suspicious. She knew people had been disappearing. There had to be a connection.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do. Something is going on there. Your aunt is there, and she’s been gone for years.” I couldn’t tell her the full truth—that I’d helped Henry. I couldn’t risk losing her trust now. We needed to stick together.

  She bit her lip. “Oh, God.” She scanned the floor, as if she was searching for answers in the linoleum’s brown flecks.

  “We’ve got to go get them.”

  “No.” She didn’t sound convincing.

  “Then we have to tell the authorities.”

  “No,” she snapped. Pretty convincing this time.

  “Why not?”

  I myself had reservations. Honestly, those military people had been in Dr. Carrillo’s office the other day, and I didn’t know if I trusted her either. Which made me wonder: if Henry was into some bad shit, would I be implicated for helping him?

  “Because they could kill my aunt. Plus, I’m now on lockdown.” She nodded at the large glass doors. A man with narrow eyes and hair like a squirrel leaned against the doorframe, smoking a cigarette.

  “What … is he your bodyguard?”

  “Pretty much. Grandfather put him on me to ensure I did the testing. And that I stay here.”

  “People are disappearing, Julia. We have to do something.”

  She crossed her tiny arms over her chest. “I’m stuck here.”

  “Bullshit.”

  39

  Julia

  I could feel Harvey through the window, watching me. “He’ll keep an eye on you for your own good,” Grandfather had told me before Harvey escorted me back to campus.

  He was an intimidating “escort.” I had once seen him kill a dog that wandered onto the compound and remembered clearly Harvey’s bared teeth as he raised the shovel over his head.

  He trailed me out the front doors and across the courtyard, some thirty yards behind.
The perfect spot. No one near the parking lot, no one lounging on the grass.

  On the edge of campus, I considered which way to turn to get to the bus stop.

  I spun around and glared at him. “Why do you feel the need to babysit me?” My voice thundered in my chest again.

  “Because I don’t have a cage for you. Yet.” An ugly leer crept up his cheek, and my stomach churned. I thought of him with that shovel, the sound of the yelping dog.

  The fireflies. The sparkly little dots fluttered in my periphery.

  My fingers trembled and I drew on the frustrating moments in my mind. It had started with Steve and the freak factor at SRI, then expanded to seeing Aunt Sabrina but not being able to reach her, the impotent feeling of being under Grandfather’s watchful rule. The strange disappearances of all the people here at SRI. The creepy-crawling feelings I got from Henry. It was all wrong, and it rumbled in my chest. If I let them, these thoughts would bubble up into one rolling emotion that would swallow everything like a raging flood.

  The ground wobbled and almost appeared to roll, like a rug being shaken and flung in the air. Harvey frowned. That’s nothing, Harvey. I willed for worse. Not trees. Not cars. But bones. His bones. For him to feel the pain of that dog. I spread my fingers and something familiar and strong shot through me like a flapping whip.

  A crack pierced the air and he cried out, falling to the ground. He writhed, held his leg, and I squeezed the pulsing energy around me for one last break. An arm. Snap! His foghorn wail rolled across the walkway. “What the hell? You little…” He lifted his head, cursing and struggling to get to his feet despite the broken bones. A momentary flash of guilt. I’d hurt someone on purpose. Whether he deserved it or not was beside the point. You did it to get to your aunt, Julia. I told myself this, but another question rose to the center of my mind. If I have this in me, what else am I capable of?

  The ground continued to shudder behind me. I had no idea how to stop it, so I turned and fled like I had wings until I reached the bus stop. After a long bus ride, I would step onto a train and leave California for good.

  Charley had taken care of the train tickets, and there we stood, ready to run away to North Dakota, staring straight ahead at the railyard. The chugging train approached us.

  Charley touched my hand, not in a nosy way, but rather in an act of solidarity. I squeezed it and a lump formed in my throat. I had no idea what was ahead for us, but I trusted her. “I’m glad you’re here, Charley,” I said.

  “Me too,” she said, warmth filling her face.

  The silver train rolled forward and screeched to a halt before us. After a period of time, the conductor called for passengers.

  One railcar looked different from the others, with blackened windows instead of the frilly white curtains decorating the others. I couldn’t see in. Curious, I marched down the platform to investigate, when the conductor caught my arm. “Sorry, miss. That’s off-limits.”

  “Who rides in it?” I asked, eyeing him.

  He shifted nervously. “It’s off-limits.” He pulled gently on my arm, guiding me toward the other passenger car.

  “My grandfather is Donald H. Cavanaugh. The founder of the United Chicago Railway. I’m Julia Cavanaugh.” Charley’s quiet gaze felt heavy on me.

  “Oh.” He looked sheepish. Of course, he’d unlock this passenger car for us. “I’m so sorry, but that passenger car is not owned by United Chicago.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “It’s owned by Fairmont Industries.”

  Charley straightened as if she’d been poked with a stick.

  “What’s Fairmont?” I asked, looking at her.

  “Henry.” Charley’s words were soft, meant only for me. “We’ll ride up front.” She pointed her thumb at the main car.

  In the dining car, Charley chastised me for telling the conductor who I was. “You do realize that now your gramps will know you’re on his train, and he has the power to actually stop the damn thing and haul you off.”

  “We’ll get there before he even finds out.”

  She tilted her head back on the seat. “God, I wish we were traveling someplace cool instead of this whole search-and-rescue mission. Like, someday, I want to go to Europe.”

  “I’ve been there,” I said.

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “Paris. You’ve definitely got to check out Paris,” I said.

  “Someday,” she said.

  I turned to her. “What’s Fairmont Industries?”

  She paused for a couple seconds before answering. She gazed at the seat ahead of her. “Henry was working with them to transport psychics to Mandaree.”

  I frowned, sitting silent, before she stuttered out further explanation.

  “Listen,” she said, “I don’t know why. I know he was getting money for it, though.”

  “How’d he get them to go? Minnie hates him.” I paused and then added, “We all do.”

  “I don’t know.” She stopped and bit her cheek. “You know… Henry had this force, this energy. Didn’t you feel it?”

  I gazed at her blankly, forcing her to elaborate.

  “It took me awhile…” Charley said slowly, studying indents of the ceiling. “But I think he has some ability to manipulate what we think and do.”

  Mind control.

  I stared out the window, memories swimming in my mind. The night we explored the fort, and then the day in the park. That was him. He touched me, and my abilities went berserk with little effort or emotion by me. It happened to others as well. Henry had always emerged by our side when things happened.

  Charley was quiet for a couple seconds before continuing. “He touched my shoulder and made me want to do stuff I wouldn’t ordinarily do. I mean, I make mistakes, but…” she stopped.

  Outside, white clouds stretched like spiderwebs across a blue sky. Thoughts gathered in my mind. Samuel screamed at Charley in the park that day. He wasn’t usually so charged. Arrogant, yes, but when Henry appeared, Samuel came unglued. Then, after that, in the hallway the night of the poltergeist, Minnie had said the ball of light in Samuel’s room was not a ghost, and then, Henry was there. He must’ve touched Minnie? She changed her mind like a light switch. Henry had made that poltergeist thing happen to get control of Samuel, get him alone, and then he influenced Minnie’s answers to confuse us.

  He had his hand on the shoulder of both Samuel and Minnie when he walked them across the campus—before they both disappeared. Who else did he influence at SRI?

  “I knew there was something about that guy,” I whispered quietly, still gazing out the window.

  Charley didn’t say anything, and a silence opened up between us, as we considered everything. Henry convinced everyone to do what he wanted.

  Then that other thought nagged at me. It was Grandfather’s railroad that transported people like Minnie and Samuel to this seemingly dangerous place. My own family?

  “What else do you know?” I asked, spinning to face her.

  She looked at her hands, twisting the seam of her blouse. She wasn’t telling me something. Something important.

  “Tell me everything. I need to know,” I said.

  The waiter handed her a soda and she took a long sip, before training her gaze at her feet. The train whistle blew.

  “Tell me, Charley!” My voice sounded like bricks.

  She turned to look at me, her eyes glassy from emotion. “I helped Henry.”

  “What?” The news exploded in my mind. “How?”

  She grimaced and flapped her hands. “Listen! I didn’t know what I was doing—not exactly. He told me they were taking them to another facility for testing. I figured it was just a competitor, you know? Like poaching players on a team.” She paused. “Maybe that’s all it is?”

  I glared at her.

  “You don’t know for sure that bad things are happening there. You don’t. We just know you think you saw your aunt, and Henry had a schedule for a train to North Dakota. Fairmont is a com
pany, not a murderer.”

  She kept talking but I was fuming inside. Was there anyone I could trust? I narrowed my eyes and scooted further away on the seat.

  “I just knew I was getting laid by a guy who was a serious fox, and I was really confused, and I finally might have real money. Money to help my family. To help me … escape,” she said. “And he had that way of making me do stuff.”

  I turned my gaze out the window, shoulders angled away, trying to block out her explanations.

  But she kept talking. “Not that you’d know anything about needing money. You’ve never had to worry about that.”

  I swung around and threw her a fierce look. So typical of everyone I knew in life. I had thought she was different. Thought she and the others saw me and not my money.

  I stood up and moved to a new location in the railcar, and for the rest of the two-day trek, I kept a watchful eye out for Grandfather’s executives and anyone who could stop the train and stop me too. And I kept my distance from lying, selfish Charley.

  At night I couldn’t sleep. Instead I watched the city lights emerge as we approached, and then shrink as we left them behind.

  Until finally, I stepped onto the platform in Mandaree.

  40

  Charley

  We were supposed to be a team, Julia and me. We were headed down an uncertain path, but yet we weren’t even talking to each other. Great.

  We walked without a word, side by side, down an empty dirt road that smelled of isolation and dust. In the distance Mandaree’s few buildings looked like paper cutouts against a pulpy sky. Our silent journey reminded me of the summer when Dad got so wasted after a bottle of whiskey that he kicked me and Cindy out of the car on our way to Lake Michigan. I don’t even remember why he went haywire, but I walked with Cindy, just seven then, in the flaming sun along a ribbon of road for about two hours.