Perilous: A Ripple Novel (Ripple Series Book 7)

by Cidney Swanson

  Will hastily swallowed his desire to laugh at Chrétien’s enthusiasm.

  “Yeah, but when?” demanded Skandor. “And where?”

  Pfeffer, drying his hands, said, “I propose we make a thorough search in case they left clues behind as to their next destination or their aims.”

  “Great,” said Skandor. “Where do we start?”

  Will inhaled sharply, remembering the email he’d watched Raoul send. “We start in the next room over,” he said. “Raoul sent an email to Günter. I saw him do it right before Skandor attacked Georg.”

  The others followed Will into the lab through the doorway.

  “Over here,” said Will, seating himself before the computer. “Oh, crap. It’s password-protected.”

  Skandor emitted a single harsh laugh. “Let me at it,” he said.

  Three minutes later, Skandor had hacked into the system and brought up the email program and located the email. “Here goes,” he said.

  Together, the group read what Raoul had to say.

  Dear Günter,

  I’m writing you because I’m worried about that girl I told you about. The Angel Georg said wouldn’t wake up. Well, she woke up a few weeks ago, and I liked her a lot. Her name’s Katrin. She’s been really depressed. She lost someone important to her. Anyway, Georg made me swear I wouldn’t mention your names to her, which I thought was weird, but Georg’s just that way. He likes his little secrets or whatever. Earlier today, she told me she was raised in the same family group you were in. Along with Georg. Which makes sense, actually. Katrin was the only person around here who ever questioned Georg, including asking whether it was right for him to have assumed charge of our group.

  She and Georg had a disagreement right after I told her about the two of you living in Nice, and I saw Georg use a post-hypnotic suggestion on her to make her fall instantly asleep. After that, he vanished with her. I’m worried what he might have done. I’m pretty sure she was trying to get away from him right before he put her to sleep. I suspect she’d decided to leave and maybe visit the two of you in Nice.

  I followed Georg by listening to his thoughts. I can hear other caméleons if I’m right next to them—their emotions, I mean—so I followed him, to see what he was going to do with Katrin. I stayed with him until he came solid at a beach. I forget the name of the village, but the sand is black. It’s a fishing village on the other side of the island from us. When Georg came solid, he was alone. He stood on the beach for a minute, stuffed a rock in his pocket, and said, ‘Farewell,’ out loud, and then he went back home.

  Honestly, he could have left Katrin somewhere in our building and then gone to the beach to say bye to the ocean or something. I don’t know. But when I asked him about her just now, he told me it was none of my concern, and I could tell he was mad at me for asking.

  I’m sorry to trouble you. Maybe I’m worrying about nothing. But I thought someone should know, in case anything happens to the rest of us. So, now you know. I hope we meet again under better circumstances.

  Yours,

  Raoul

  Will looked down at Skandor, whose face was white.

  “Surely Georg has not practiced some great harm upon her,” murmured Chrétien.

  Like drowning her, thought Will. He didn’t want to be the one to say it out loud.

  “Surely not,” said Pfeffer.

  “I don’t think he’d hurt her,” murmured Skandor. “He has a huge crush on her.”

  “On his half-sister?” asked Will, astonished and more than a little grossed out.

  “He’s twisted as a roller coaster,” said Skandor. “But I saw what I saw back in San Francisco. He wanted her.”

  “Disgusting,” muttered Will.

  “I’m just saying I don’t think he would kill her,” said Skandor.

  Will heard what it cost his friend to say the words. He clasped his hand on Skandor’s shoulder. “I’m sure you’re right, man. I say we go search this beach. Georg doesn’t strike me as the type to say goodbye to a beach.”

  “Agreed,” said Pfeffer. “We should search. But we need to search this facility, too.”

  “Please,” said Skandor, “I know we came to find out what Georg’s up to, but I can’t just sit here if Katrin’s stuck down on the beach.”

  “I’ll go with Skandor,” said Will. “I’m good at finding hidden things.”

  “One of us should stay with Pfeff, though,” said Will. “In case Georg decides to come back for his teddy bear or something.”

  “Chrétien’s the best at listening,” said Pfeffer.

  “And I am of a great enough size to vanish with Pfeffer,” said Chrétien. “Should it become necessary.”

  “Right,” said Will. “So we split up, two and two, okay?”

  “We must also contact mon père,” said Chrétien. “He will be most anxious to hear from us.”

  30

  SOMETHING BESIDES GRAVITY

  While Katrin had lived as a resident at Georg’s forest compound, she’d exerted herself to learn all she could about hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion. She learned that her own susceptibility to fall asleep when commanded to was a result of a post-hypnotic suggestion. She learned that some people were better able to focus their attention and were thus more susceptible to hypnosis. From something Georg had repeated from Uncle Fritz, Katrin suspected Helmann had culled the herd of those who weren’t able to focus in this manner.

  She’d discovered many articles designed to help a person increase the ease with which they attained the trance-like state of hypnosis but none that offered to teach her how, on her own, to undo a post-hypnotic suggestion made by another. It had to be out there, but in the limited amounts of time she could access the internet without Georg near at hand, she was singularly unsuccessful in locating the desired “how to.”

  There was one article, however, that offered a modicum of hope. She might—just might—be able to layer a secondary suggestion herself. Several anxious days had passed between the time she read the article offering her hope in this regard and the time she was able to study so-called “self-hypnosis.” In the end, she succeeded—or she hoped she had—in implanting a secondary suggestion: if Georg should force her asleep, then after half an hour spent in slumber, she would awaken.

  Katrin had debated over the amount of time. At first, she’d felt that the sooner she awoke after Georg’s command to vai a dormire, the better. If he followed his past habit or Fritz’s example, Georg would render her invisible after putting her to sleep. This meant that when she awoke, he wouldn’t see her eyes fluttering open. But might he not notice her thoughts if he was nearby? He hadn’t been as quick of hearing as Hansel, but what if he’d gotten better in the years since they’d been children together?

  Waking herself right away was probably a bad idea. Should she wait ten minutes? An hour? She had decided that half an hour should give Georg plenty of time to run off to some other activity, at which point it would be safe for her to wake up, invisible or solid, and make a break for freedom.

  Of course, she had hoped Georg wouldn’t choose to command her to fall asleep in the future. She’d certainly given him an earful about her feelings on the subject. But Georg was still Georg, so she had taken precautionary measures.

  Thus, on the day that Georg decided to flee the island after burying Katrin a meter below-ground, Katrin had the opportunity to discover she’d been successful in implanting the “wake up” command. As she felt consciousness return, a flutter of happiness seemed to shiver through her body. She had done it! She’d tricked Georg—beaten him at his own game. So, was she solid or insubstantial? A moment’s attention to her body revealed she couldn’t feel her heart beating, so she knew she wasn’t in her solid form. That was okay. Now that she was awake, she could bring herself solid whenever it felt safe.

  All was dark about her. Of course—her eyes were still closed from when Georg had ordered her to sleep. She gave herself the command to open her eyes. That was odd; it r
emained quite dark. She thought back, trying to remember what time it had been half an hour ago when Georg had attacked her. Lunch had finished perhaps an hour earlier—it couldn’t have been much after two in the afternoon. Three at the latest. Which meant the sun wouldn’t be down just yet. In fact, it wouldn’t be down for hours.

  Where was she? She shifted slightly and felt a tickling sensation, almost like a rush of adrenaline. But that wasn’t possible—she was invisible. She was most definitely not solid at the moment. And anyway, the sensation wasn’t adrenaline. It was more that it reminded her of adrenaline. But the more she focused on it, the less that seemed a good description of the sensation. It was familiar. It was something she’d felt before while invisible.

  Why was it dark? Her brain took her back to the first problem that had puzzled her. Had Georg locked her in one of the interior rooms without windows? Perhaps she should try to sit upright and then take a few steps forward until she found a wall. Walls felt different than open air, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to find a wall and escape.

  She sat upright. The tickling sensation increased as she did so. How odd. Perhaps the unconventional way in which she’d awakened herself had done something to her sense perceptions. She felt for the edge of the bed or chair or counter she’d been left upon but couldn’t find an edge. Everything felt uniform in a way that was confusing. Sure, things didn’t feel as distinctively different when you were invisible, but there were some distinctions to be made.

  She ignored the strange lack of “edge” and pushed forward a few steps.

  The tickling sensation grew stronger. It was starting to annoy her, actually. She moved ahead anyway, a few more steps. Find the wall, figure out what room she was in, move out of doors, and get the heck out of here.

  It occurred to her she might be moving through air—perhaps she’d shifted just enough off whatever surface had supported her that she couldn’t find the edge anymore. Slowly, she reached down with her hands, feeling for “floor.” Even walking through air, unanchored to the floor, she’d eventually bump into a wall.

  Unfortunately, until then, it would be crazy to come solid if she didn’t know whether her body parts might be lodged “inside” a desk or a storage box or something else. She felt for the floor once again. As before, it simply wasn’t there. Okay. She was in the air. Well, she could come solid, but if she did so in mid-air, it might mean an uncomfortable fall.

  She reached forward in the dark. She would try the other five dimensional “sides” first, searching for something that felt like floor or wall. Walls usually felt ticklish, didn’t they? Stone walls did anyway, and the compound was built of stone and cement.

  And then she remembered where she’d felt the peculiar tickling sensation before. It wasn’t from passing through a wall. No, this sensation was more fluid; the particles were smaller.

  As small as grains of sand.

  When they’d been young, the siblings had spent time “burying” their limbs in the white sand of the Bahamian or Caribbean island upon which they’d lived. This was sand. She was in sand. The recognition hit her hard.

  She was buried in sand.

  There was no doubt now that she recollected the sensation of those long ago experiences during a caméleon’s holiday. She was buried in sand. But … which direction was up? She should reposition herself, back to where she’d started. That way she’d be able to tell which direction was up. She wouldn’t want to start tunneling through the sand while heading down—or sideways, out to sea. But how could she tell how far she’d gone from her original position? And who was to say Georg had placed her face up in a recumbent position? Who was to say he hadn’t buried her head down, out of spite? Georg could be very petty.

  She mustn’t panic. There had to be a solution. She might only be a few inches underground. Perhaps, she’d been set on the beach and she had dug her own way into the sand. But that didn’t seem very likely. She’d felt the tickling sensation the first time she’d tried to move. A sickness crept through her mind. She was buried underground with no way of knowing how far she might have to ascend. No, it was worse—she didn’t even know which way was up and which of the myriad other directions weren’t up.

  Fear crept forward, eager to seize her. There had to be a solution, she told herself. There had to be.

  A memory returned from survival training—Helga, demanding the children think of the correct way to orient themselves should they be buried in an avalanche. Of course, Helga had been talking about snow, not sand, but the principle would still apply, would it not? Hansel had gotten the answer right.

  “If you clear a passage around your mouth, you can spit and see which way the spit falls. Then dig away from the down-side using gravity as your guide.”

  Hansel had been given a chocolate bar by Aunt Helga. He had shared it with his family, and the generosity of this act had earned praise from Father Helmann himself.

  So, which way did her spit fall?

  Katrin’s heart sank. She couldn’t spit without coming solid, and it would be madness to come solid now. At best she would re-bury herself in wet sand. At worst, she might displace boulders which could ricochet and injure her.

  You’re trapped, whispered the circling voices of her darkest fears.

  She pushed back against fear, against giving in or giving up. She could think her way out, like Aunt Helga had so often forced them to do. Solve the problem: How could you find “up” using something besides gravity?

  She thought hard. She went back through the avalanche scenario, seeking for an alternative. Time passed and her fears began circling again, like wolves drawn close as the fire died out. Finally, she admitted it to herself: there was no solution. It was as if Georg had known what she might try. He had won, again, like he used to win through trickery when they were children.

  He had won.

  She was trapped and it might as well be under miles of sand, because in all directions but one, it would be miles, would it not? How deep did sand extend? She wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter. There was no escape. She was trapped.

  Silently, Katrin screamed and screamed and screamed, but no one came to her aid.

  31

  TAGANANA

  As Will searched the Internet for black sand beaches on Tenerife, he could feel Skandor’s impatience radiating off him in waves.

  “Chill,” murmured Will. “It’ll save a lot of trouble if we pick the right beach the first time.”

  “Sorry, man,” mumbled Skandor. “Back home, if I felt like this, I’d grab a hatchet and go chop wood. I’ll go stand outside.”

  Will laughed. “I don’t think this facility has hatchets. There’s no fireplaces.”

  Skandor sighed heavily.

  “Hold on a sec,” said Will. “I think I found it. A small village called Taganana is close by and on the far side of these mountains. Broad black sand beach.”

  “Seriously?” asked Skandor.

  “Yup. Let’s go.”

  They told the others, and Chrétien promised to keep an ear open if they had any messages to pass back.

  “Or we could, you know, phone,” said Skandor.

  “Only if we’re solid, man,” said Will.

  Skandor grunted in assent.

  The two rippled and Will led Skandor up and over the deeply ridged mountains toward the village of Taganana. Together, they descended in ghostly silence onto the wide and empty black sand. The sun hung low on the horizon, and they had the beach to themselves.

  ~ ~ ~

  Katrin attempted to calm herself as she had been trained to calm others, back in the days of Helmann’s schooling.

  Yes, she was trapped in sand at an unknown depth. Yes, she was conscious in a state in which unconsciousness might generally be preferred. But really, how different was this from the time Skandor had left her conscious back at Geneses? It was exactly the same. She’d been stuck then because she’d been shot full of Neuroplex. She was stuck now because staying still was less dangerou
s than moving around.

  Georg would return for her eventually, after all. If he didn’t mean to return for her, he would have killed her, right?

  But when would Georg return?

  That was the question that ate at her peace of mind. She forced herself to count the passing of time, minute by minute. It was calming, too, doing nothing but counting off the seconds as they ticked past: one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand. She varied it with one-hippopotamus, two-hippopotamus, three-hippopotamus, four-hippopotamus. An hour passed in this manner.

  How long had she lain still and conscious that time Skandor had left her awake? It had been days, surely.

  Skandor.

  Skandor.

  Her heart reached out toward him, wherever he was now. She’d thought of demanding Georg provide her with written proof of her friend’s death. Her search through obituaries had yielded nothing even close to the name Skandor Dusselhoff. But maybe she’d spelled it wrong when she’d done the search. It wasn’t like they’d discussed how to spell his name.

  No, they’d spoken of glass blowing and jewelry making, of shooting stars and early snowfall. Katrin felt a sort of peace settle over her as she thought of the day they’d spent eating those cookies—what were they called? Pepper cookies? Something a bit more Scandinavian sounding than that. She saw the red tin in her mind’s eye: Pepparkakor. That was it. A quiet sort of sadness wrapped itself around Katrin. Skandor had to be dead, in spite of her inability to find any notice of his death. Georg was a liar and a cheat, but there had been a look of sincerity in his eyes. He’d believed what he’d said. Skandor was gone.

  She would never visit Midgard with him, now. Perhaps she would visit it alone, once she was free. She would tell his parents how lucky they had been to have a son like Skandor.

  But of course they would know that already. To have her say it would just bring their grief back all over again. No, she would not visit Midgard. Or if she did, she would do so invisibly, to see all the places he’d spoken of and to say a sort of farewell to him.