Broken Souls (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 2)

by D. W. Moneypenny

  Mara shouted toward her hand, “There was a voice! It was coming out of the Philco radio you gave me!”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the voice. Can you still hear it? Maybe the phone isn’t picking up the sound.”

  “No, it’s gone. There was static and a voice, but it’s gone now.”

  “I wish I could discuss it right now, but I’ve got a line of people in front of the counter here, and I can’t stop to talk, at least not until Sam gets back from tutoring later this afternoon. I’ll give you a call when he gets here.”

  “No, that’s okay. Just come over this evening like we agreed. I’ll try to not go psycho until then.” She hung up and headed over to the counter.

  Abby and Bruce walked into the front part of the store. Bruce was pulling on a jacket.

  “Who are you yelling at?” Abby asked.

  Mara took a deep breath and hoped her face wasn’t too flushed. “Oh, I was talking to Mr. Ping next door on the speakerphone. Checking to make sure I hadn’t caused a power surge that blew his breakers.”

  Bruce smiled. “I haven’t heard him complain about that for at least a couple months. You know, he hasn’t complained about anything recently. Must be mellowing out.”

  “Yes, he’s definitely gotten mellow,” Mara said.

  “You up for lunch?” Abby asked, leaning toward Bruce.

  “No, I’ve got too much going on around here. Also I don’t like for both of us to be gone at the same time if I can help it. We’d have to close up the shop, and we do that too often as it is.”

  “All right, we’ll see you later.” Abby grasped Bruce by the elbow and led him to the door.

  He turned back to Mara and said, “You want me to bring you something back?”

  “No, just return in one piece.” She smiled and added, “Abby, don’t be a brute.”

  Abby hustled Bruce out the door and turned before she closed the door, to wink and smile at Mara.

  * * *

  By the time Abby and Bruce had returned from lunch, Mara was determined to get something accomplished, so she ordered Abby to return to school or to find someplace else to be truant. Mara turned her attention to Mr. Mickleson’s grandfather clock or, as Mr. Mason liked to refer to it, his longcase clock.

  Mara was no expert in antique clocks; she couldn’t tell you who built or designed one from the other, but she did know the basic variations of the mechanisms and how they worked. This particular model was an eight-day clock, meaning it only had to be wound once a week, as opposed to a one-day clock that had to be wound daily.

  The clock’s hands had not moved from the 6:58 position since its delivery. And the pendulum—which could be seen through the glass door at the clock’s waist—was not swinging. It either was nonfunctional or it needed to be wound. Mara opened the glass door and looked in the bottom of the casing below the weights, cables and pendulum, where she found the key taped down, apparently so it would not be lost during transport. She carefully pulled it loose and closed the casing. Tiptoeing, she reached up to the ornate bonnet of the clock, opened the crystal covering its face and inserted the key in the holes on each side of the dial, winding until it was too stiff to continue. She then opened the glass door again, gave the pendulum a slight push and stood back.

  Nothing.

  The pendulum swung back to its prior place but did not pick up any momentum nor respond to the demands of the cable and weight that should have compelled it to swing.

  Reopening the glass door, Mara stuck her head inside and felt along the cables and reached up to the pulleys above them. Nothing seemed tangled or out of place. She walked around the counter, bent down behind it, retrieved a flashlight from a shelf. Straightening, she pointed it at the grandfather clock and pressed the On switch.

  A bright white light shone out of the flashlight and struck the tall wooden clock at the same instant it chimed, reverberating off the walls of the tiny shop and causing Mara to jump a foot into the air, hitting her head on the Billiards light fixture over the counter and landing with her back against a neon Coca-Cola sign. She looked up, saw the clock face read 7:00, heard the telltale tick-tock and saw the pendulum swinging to and fro effortlessly.

  * * *

  The jangle of the bells over the door caused Mara to look up from the nail gun she was reassembling. Her eyes widened when she saw Ping standing in the open doorway with a smear of flour on his face and what looked like a dusting of nutmeg or cinnamon across the white shirt that stretched across his belly. Behind him the day had already turned to night, and streetlights were visible across the road. He closed the door and walked up to the counter.

  “What a long day. I can’t believe how busy the bakery has gotten all of a sudden. I had assumed that the holidays might mean a slow down because people would be taking time off from work and doing some of their own baking at home.” He leaned against the counter. “Not at all. With company parties and family gatherings, I’m quickly getting booked up through New Year’s. Nobody does their own cooking anymore.”

  Mara put aside the nail gun. “You know, I think Mom’s going to want me to get some stuff from you for Thanksgiving. You going to have anything left? She wants to have lots of different stuff for Sam to try out, since this will be his first Thanksgiving.”

  “Getting something from me isn’t going to be a new experience for Sam. He eats half of what I bake before it can cool. Why isn’t he fat?”

  “He’s a kid. Where is he anyway?”

  “Next door, closing up. He’s got clean-up detail until I can hire some more help.”

  Mara walked to the front door, flipped the dead bolt and turned inward the Open sign hanging in the window. Returning to the counter, she hit a few keys on the register, and the drawer popped out. She pulled out the cash tray and motioned for Ping to follow her to the back of the shop. Glancing up at the grandfather clock, she said, “We’ve got a few minutes before Bohannon arrives. Let’s sit back there and talk for a bit.”

  Ping followed her to the back room where a wheelless bicycle sat upside down in front of a garage door surrounded by various parts. To the right of it, a cluttered long workbench displayed an array of tools, rags and bicycle parts. Ping moved to the left to sit at a cheap resin table surrounded by mismatched resin chairs in a little alcove next to the tiny office where Mara puttered with the money tray.

  “Looks like Bruce is keeping busy,” Ping said.

  Mara called out from the office, “I think his bicycle repair work is the key to keeping this business going. Mr. Mason’s older customers have been coming in for years with their gadgets, but Bruce brings in the younger, hipper crowd, who more than likely would throw away their old gadgets and buy something new. A lot of the bicyclists like the idea of recycling and repairing stuff, and they get hooked on bringing in their stuff.”

  “Sam said there was something you wanted to talk about?”

  Mara stepped from the office, pulled out a chair with a loud skittering sound and sat down. “About this static I’m hearing from the radio . . .”

  Ping raised a hand. “Sam told me that you wanted to talk before you called me about the Philco 90. What was on your mind then?”

  “Oh! That’s right. Life has become such an endless string of issues that one thing keeps pushing out the other. I can’t keep up with everything.” Mara pulled her hair over her shoulders and leaned onto the table as if she needed the support. “I’m sure Sam mentioned to you that he found out about my dad, right?”

  “You mean he found out about his father. The fact that he’s yours as well is incidental at the moment. It was all he spoke about when he got in this morning.”

  “Whatever. Look, my father is a doctor. He’s the complete opposite of my mother. I don’t see being able to convince him that he has a son from an alternate reality. There’s no way that is going to happen.”

  “Never say never, Mara. Two months ago there was no way you would ever believe that you have the ability to alter reality, that you ar
e a progenitor.”

  “That’s different. There was a way for me to demonstrate the truth of that.”

  “And I’m sure you and your mother can come up with a way of demonstrating to your father that Sam is his son. Give it some time and consideration. I’m sure it will come to you.”

  “Time is the problem. Sam is so eager to meet his dad, I’m afraid he might do something impulsive, like send Dad an email or call him up.”

  “I don’t think Sam will do that. We had a talk this morning, and I think he understands the challenges that are involved. He’s a boy excited about the prospect of having a father for the first time in his life. Let him enjoy the notion of it while you and your mother work out how to go about introducing them.”

  “I can’t even imagine it. You don’t know my father.”

  “I bet your mother will figure it out. She’s a very smart, sensitive lady. Give her time. This isn’t something you have to fix right now.” Ping leaned back and tried to brush away the brown dust on his belly. “I’ve got pumpkin pie ingredients all over me.”

  “You’ve got a smear of flour on your face too.” Mara smiled and wiped his cheek with her thumb.

  “Thanks. That’s one item on your list of issues. What’s next?”

  “I can’t seem to fix anything anymore.”

  “What do you mean? I see satisfied customers coming out of here all the time. A lot of them stop by the bakery for coffee or a snack, carrying all manner of gadgets.”

  “Oh, things are getting repaired, but it has more to do with metaphysics than mechanics. Everything I touch seems to repair itself.” She pointed to the front of the shop. “That big grandfather clock out there? I called Mr. Mickleson and asked him what he thought was wrong with it, and he told me that his grandson had been playing inside the waist—where the weights and pendulum hang— and several pieces had been knocked out of the mechanism. He said he had forgotten to send along the broken parts and would stop by in the morning.”

  “Yes, and?”

  Mara’s eyes widened. “Ping, it’s already fixed. It’s working. All I did was wind it and look at it with a flashlight. Missing parts replaced themselves out of thin air.”

  “I’m not sure I’m seeing the problem. I told you that I thought your technical ability was tied into your metaphysical powers.”

  “How would you like to spend all day having pies and cakes pop out of your oven without you having to first mix the ingredients and put them in to bake?”

  “With business the way it is lately, that might not be such a bad thing.”

  “Ping, I want to take things apart, figure out what’s wrong and fix them, with my hands and tools, not with this ability. I don’t want things to just fix themselves. Where’s the challenge in that?”

  “As I see it, there are two ways you can approach this. One would be to accept that your metaphysical ability is another tool in your tool kit that you use to repair gadgets. Things aren’t just repairing themselves. You are repairing them through this extraordinary gift.” Mara opened her mouth to protest, but Ping silenced her with a raised finger. “Or you could work on better mastering your ability so that you can control when these things happen. You should be able to control what you do and when you do it.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Practice, Mara. Practice. You’ve got to work with your abilities. Learn to use them, how to turn them on and turn them off. That will take practice and patience.”

  “Patience seems to be a theme with you this evening.”

  There was a loud pounding coming from the front door of the shop. Mara jumped up to answer it. “That must be Bohannon.”

  “What about the radio?” Ping asked.

  Mara stopped and turned. “We’ll have to talk later. And I want to get into this dragon business of yours too.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Mara backed away from the front door to allow room for Detective Bohannon to hobble into the shop on his crutches. He held a laptop computer under his arm, pressed against one of the crutches, and seemed to have trouble maintaining his balance.

  “Why don’t you let me carry the computer, Detective?” Mara said, stepping forward and slipping it from under his arm. “If you could close and dead bolt the door, Mr. Ping and I are sitting here in the back.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Lantern.”

  “Please call me Mara. That way I won’t feel like I’m participating in a police interrogation. That is, unless I am.”

  “Mara then. You can call me Bo. And, no, this is not a police investigation, only a confused guy trying to understand what is happening.”

  Ping stood up when they entered the back of the shop. “Confusion is our specialty, Detective,” he said and pulled out a chair. “Please have a seat.”

  “You can call me Bo too,” the detective said, taking the seat. “What do people call you? Mr. Ping?”

  “Just Ping, no mister. No one calls me by my first name.”

  “I imagine calling you Aristotle would put off most people.” Mara smiled and poked him with an elbow.

  “Yes, I saw that on some of the reports after the plane crash. Odd name, particularly for a Chinese American.”

  “I’m sure it would be an odd name even for a Greek American in this day and age, but my father wanted to name me after an army buddy, and so I’m stuck with it.”

  With that, the conversation died, slipped into an uncomfortable silence. Mara wasn’t sure how to start explaining all that had occurred since Flight 559 had plunged into the Columbia River. And Bohannon, while having dozens of questions, found himself tongue-tied, unable to formulate one that didn’t make him sound like a lunatic. He glanced over at Ping, forced a smile and widened his eyes, a silent call for help.

  Ping straightened in his chair and said, “Bo, why don’t we start with what happened to the passengers on the flight that went down.”

  Relief momentarily swept over Bohannon’s face. “That would be a good place to begin.”

  “Each of the passengers on Flight 559 was replaced with a counterpart from an alternate reality, or realm, as I like to call it, with the exception of Mara. Her counterpart on the flight came to an unfortunate end during the explosion that brought down the flight.”

  Bohannon frowned as if working on a puzzle. “So the bodies that were recovered from the river, the ones that were kept in the makeshift morgue in the hangar, were the original passengers, the ones who took off on that flight.”

  “That’s correct,” Ping said.

  “How did this happen?” Bohannon asked, looking at Mara.

  Mara looked to Ping and said, “You seem good at summing these things up. How did this happen?”

  “Mara’s counterpart from another realm used a metaphysical device that enabled people to cross over from alternate realities. Unfortunately she lost control of it in a tussle during the flight, and she came in contact with this Mara, which set off the explosion. I believe that the confluence of those events yanked the counterparts for each of the passengers—each counterpart randomly pulled from a different realm—into this realm.”

  Bohannon tilted his head, as if he were trying to follow the logic of what Ping had said. He squinted slightly and said, “So you were a passenger on the flight.”

  “Yes.”

  “That means you are actually from an alternate reality, er, realm.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And my former partner, Special Agent Suter, he was on the flight, and he was from a different realm.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Lord, have mercy. It was obvious that something didn’t add up, that we had a duplication of passengers—one set of dead ones and one set of live ones,” Bohannon said, looking up at the ceiling as he assimilated the information. “What about this explosion? You touched your counterpart?”

  Mara nodded and said, “I didn’t understand that’s what she was, and I certainly didn’t understand that it would set off an explosion. Normally when c
ounterparts touch, an explosion occurs, and the one who is out of place is pushed back to their own realm.”

  Bohannon stiffened. “Is there anything else that can cause this to happen?”

  “It appears that the reaction can be set off if someone comes in contact with even a few cells belonging to their counterpart. For example, we encountered a situation in which someone touched a toothbrush belonging to their counterpart, and it set off an explosion. Presumably the person was pushed back to their own realm,” Ping said.

  “Who was that?” Bohannon said.

  “Sarah Gamble and her grandson,” Mara said.

  “Ah, that’s what happened to them,” Bohannon said. “We’ve had a few reports of missing passengers. That must be what is going on in this video.” The detective reached for his laptop, unfolded it and hit the Power button. “You have Wi-Fi around here?”

  Mara nodded and said, “What video are you talking about?”

  “It’s on YouTube, look.” He typed for a few seconds, dramatically clicked on the mouse pad and swiveled the laptop around so Mara and Ping could see the screen. Bohannon could not see the image but had watched it several times and knew what they were seeing by the sound track—the explosion, the screams and the whimpering woman at the end—and by the gaping mouths and looks of horror on Mara’s and Ping’s faces.

  “I never liked the oboe,” Ping said. “Was anyone else hurt?”

  “Nothing serious, but they did not find hide nor hair of Marcus Gentry after that.”

  “I remember seeing his name on the list of passengers from the flight.”

  Bohannon nodded and added, “He was from Little Rock, Arkansas. That’s where the oboe event happened. Similar things like this could be happening all over the country or all over the world. About a third of the people on the flight were not from this area.”

  “God only knows what is going on out there.” Mara looked at Ping.

  “There’s more to this than people being swapped back and forth between realms, isn’t there? I mean, some of these people aren’t like normal human beings,” Bohannon said, then added, “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”