Koertig savored his cigarette, one deliberate drag after another. “Of course, Teddy, of course. Discourse with you is a pleasant respite from my interchanges with most of Falzon’s collection of troglodytes.”
Telly had to smile at that. “Well… thanks, I guess.”
Another plume of blue smoke headed toward the ceiling. “So, talk.”
A question had been gnawing at his for days… this business of Dr. Manfred Koertig’s middle name being “Telford.” Telly found it all too strange and coincidental. What were the odds of him and this freaky pluriban sharing a name as odd and distinctive as that? He needed an answer.
“I…I wanted to ask you about your name – your middle name.”
“Telford? Why in the world would that interest you?”
“Well, because my first name is Tedford – that’s where ‘Teddy’ comes from. The names are so close, I couldn’t help but wonder.”
Koertig shrugged. “The woman who assembled me used to like to vacation in Faerie. Do you know your geography?”
Telly didn’t, so he hedged. “A little.”
“At the very least you should know that Faerie lies just across the Nymph Channel from the Pluribus Union. It’s an easy trip and my assembler used to like to vacation among the hobgoblins in Telford. I’ve never heard of a town called ‘Tedford.’”
Assembler…no parents. What an odd way to come into the world.
“What was your childhood like?”
Koertig gave Telly a withering look as he took a final drag – right down to the brown filter – and stubbed out the butt.
“You really are a backwoods rube, aren’t you.”
And how. “I’m the first to admit it, sir.”
“Well, if you knew anything you’d know that pluribans don’t have a physical childhood – we are born into fully grown, fully functioning bodies – but we do have an initial period of intellectual growth where we learn about the world around us.” He waved a dismissive hand. “But enough wasting time with meaningless blather. Let’s get to work.”
Not “meaningless blather” to Telly. He desperately wanted to know how his mother came to give him the same name as a patchwork in an alternate reality.
41
At first the sound came to Cal as the faintest of tappings, and as he tried to incorporate it into his dream, the tapping became louder, more insistent, until finally morphing into a series of forceful knuckle-rappings on a wooden surface.
He awoke with a start. For an instant he lay in his bunk, confused and bleary-eyed against the sunlight at the upstairs windows. How much of what he’d been through last night had been real? At some point he must have collapsed into a very deep sleep, and while he had the impression of surviving a swirling madcap tapestry of weird dreams, he couldn’t remember many details.
The only thing he could focus on was that someone was clearly pounding on a door.
The Jantzes!
Of course…they were in the basement and he’d thrown the bolt on the door. As he bounded down the stairs to the middle level, the pounding grew louder.
“Cal! Cal!” It’s Orin! Open the door!” More pounding behind the cellar door. “Come on, lad! Let us out of here!”
Reaching the door, Cal put this hand on the slide-bolt, then hesitated. Could it be some kind of trick? Despite what Orin Jantz had told him about luners losing all sense of speech and reason, maybe it was a lie. A deadly trick that would play through when Cal opened the door to a ravenous hell-beast that could sever his head from his neck with one savage sweep of his razor-claws.
He looked at his fingers resting on the bolt. Just push it to the left. That’s all it might take to be the end of him.
“Cal…?”
Another voice from behind the door. It was little Ella Grace, and she sounded so sweet and gentle. No way a little kid like her could be so cunning, so evil. “Cal, can you open the door? We’re so tired and it’s dark in here.”
Cal unlocked the door.
It swung open to reveal the Jantz family, all wearing thin robes and looking like they’d just returned from a long morning run. Their hair was a bit damp and stringy and their cheeks all shared a slightly gaunt aspect. Now Cal understood why those robes were hung by the cage-key.
“Are you all okay?” he said.
Orin Jantz smiled widely. “Wellll, a bit tuckered, but otherwise just dandy! We’re all doing just dandy.”
“I’m hungry!” said Ben. “I want some flapjacks!”
“Me, too!” said Ella as she sprinted off toward the kitchen where she started pulling bowls and pots from the lower cabinets.
Irina followed her daughter and started fussing about at the sink. “How about you, Cal? I’m sure you’ll be ready for some breakfast, too.”
“Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
For the next few minutes, Cal sat there watching this happy little family go about its business as if none of the horrors of the night before had ever happened. All so bizarre, so utterly alien, Cal had no means to make sense of it. Orin had explained that the whole experience of luning was lost to lycans – practically none of what occurred in that frenzied state was ever remembered.
And that was definitely a good thing.
Gradually, Cal realized he’d do best not to dwell on what he’d seen or its aftermath. To get his mind off things, he joined Ben in arranging the breakfast table with place settings and dishes.
42
“My boss will be happy with yer helpin’ his Chief Overseer,” said Ergel as he stood at the door to Gibbel’s hut. “If there be any kind of rewardation I’ll be sure to get it to ya.”
Gibbel smiled, revealing a row of widely-spaced yellow teeth that could have served as a picket fence design. Shorter and wider than Ergel, with rolls of doughy flesh, he was unfortunate looking – even for a troll. Ergel looked down at him and extended a gnarly hand in gratitude.
As Gibbel shook, he said, “How much you think I mights be seein’?”
Ergel shrugged. “No way to calcumacate… but I be checkin’ for ya as soon as I gets back to Armagost, I will.”
Ergel didn’t like prefabricating to his fellow trolls in this foreign land, but he’d been in a tight spot last night when he’d found himself in the Lycanthum countryside as the setting sun heralded the beginning of the luning night. So obsessed had he been with catching Falzon’s humanses – and his boss’s leases – that he’d failed to plan for his own welfare once the lycans started their night of craziness. To make matters worser, he’d forgotten to fill up on coal for his truck and that cut down on his travel options. No way he’d make it all the way back to the compound before dark. Besides, even if he found enough for the trip, he mightn’t have reached the gates in time. Them odoronomous squatches would never open the gate after the moon was up.
But Ergel was no fool. That was when he remembered how close he was to the Sussehanna River Bridge, which just happened to be a toll bridge, and that meant a toll taker was on duty all the time. And all toll-takers was trolls.
Problem solved, thought Ergel with a crooked grin.
He prevailified upon Gibbel to keep him safe for the night with a flimsy surmisin’ that his boss would be so happy to know his right-hand troll had been kept safe, he probably would offer – nay, Master Simon would insistify on forcing some kind of financial rewardation into the pockets of a certain bridge troll by the name of Gibbel.
Of course that word there, that “probably,” was always a word that caused what Master Simon called “ish-shews,” weren’t it?
No matter, Ergel thought. He had way bigger ish-shews to attend. He had enough coal to at least get him back to that farmstead where Henrel had seen the humanses, and he intendified to drive there now with the hope of reappropriating them again.
Gibbel stood in his doorway watching him climb into the cab of his truck with a wistful look in his eye, and a thought came to Ergel that he might still have a use for this simple troll if things got complimicated.
Gibbel brightened. “Really? Does yer think you can use me?”
Ergel grinned. Good choice of words, toll-taker.
“Without question. In factual, if we discover anything of interest for my boss, I’ll send you with the news – that way you can collect your rewardation your own self!”
That was all Gibbel needed to hear. “Ergel, you are a good friend! Wait a quick minute while I tell the wife to collectimicate the tolls while I takes my adventure!”
Ergel nodded. “Just be quick about it.”
He watched the dimwitted troll almost skip with joy as he ran back to his hut to share his good news with his wife.
43
Mrs. Jantz was just about to start serving her pancakes when someone knocked on the front door. Cal jumped at the unexpected sound.
“I’ll get it!” Ben bolted toward it, but his father put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Just hold on a bit, son. Let me attend to this.”
Cal tensed as he imagined who could showing up this early in the morning – most of them not good possibilities.
“Who is it?” said Orin through the thick oak slab.
“It’s Ryan! Open up – please!”
Ryan! Cal had forgotten all about him and Emma. He felt his back and shoulder muscles relax as Orin unlatched the door and admitted the bedraggled and anxious looking boy.
“Where’ve you been?” said Cal.
“Oh, man, you wouldn’t believe it – we got caught out there last night!”
“What? How? What happened?”
Ryan reprised the minutes before the setting sun and the moonrise and the pack of lycans that almost caught him. Irina and Orin and their kids listened as if he were telling a campfire ghost story.
Amazing. Like they had no clue Ryan was describing the same animal violence they displayed last night. And if not for the cages downstairs, they might have been in the same pack that had chased him.
“What about Emma?” Cal said. “What happened to her?”
The question seemed to hold Ryan for an instant – as if he didn’t want to answer. “I…I don’t know. After I distracted the pack, I figured she’d made it to the trees.”
“You mean you couldn’t be sure?” said Irina.
Ryan shook his head. “No way to tell. It was dark and I was up in the branches. I didn’t want her to give her position away, so we kept quiet all night.”
Ella Grace giggled. “Sounds like fun!”
“This morning, I checked the clump of trees where she was supposed to hide but she wasn’t there. I checked the bushes where we’d been hiding but no sign of her.”
“I guess that’s a good thing?” said Cal.
Ryan spread his scraped hands. “I hope so. She had to have made it to safety or I would have heard something or… found something.”
Cal suppressed a shudder as he imagined to what Ryan alluded. The thought of finding the remains of a lycan bloodfeast and knowing it was your sister… it made his stomach clench.
Cal turned to Orin Jantz. “What should we do? Should we go out looking for her?”
Orin considered this. “Wellll, it’s still pretty early. I’m thinking we should wait a little while. She might wander in here any minute.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” said Cal.
Ryan’s tone was simple and matter-of-fact. “Then we head out looking for her.”
Irina waved them toward the table. “In the meantime, sit down and have some breakfast – you must be hungry after that long night.”
Cal looked at her and the image of her railing against the bars of her cage kept flashing in his mind’s eye. Hard to believe the same… person?… was making him a stack of pancakes. He wasn’t certain he would be able to eat anything she’d had her hands on. Had they cleaned themselves up after all that thrashing and salivating last night?
As Cal hesitated to take his seat, Ryan moved in next to him.
“You’re right,” he said. “I am kinda hungry.”
As the food was distributed and everyone started eating, Cal tried to rid his memory of the images from last night. He kept reminding himself that luning was perfectly normal for this world – a monthly inconvenience. Which was why everyone was acting so nonchalant about what they’d been through. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to eat anything and simply maneuvered his single sliced-up pancake around on his plate.
Only a few minutes after they sat down, Ryan pushed back from the table. “I’m going crazy. Emma couldn’t have gotten very far from me. She knows where to go. She should’ve been back here by now.”
Cal stood, glad to be away from the table. “I’ll go with you.”
Before Ryan could reply, Ben jumped off his chair and ran to the front window. “Somebody’s coming!”
Simultaneously the sound of a steam engine’s signature chugging could be heard entering the property. Cal wondered if Ben’s acute hearing was a part of his lupine nature.
Moving to the window, Ryan pointed to the farm truck rolling slowly up the driveway. “It’s Dillon.”
Orin Jantz walked up beside him, peered out at the approaching vehicle. “Anybody with him?”
“You mean like Emma?” Ryan’s voice caught. “No, it looks like he’s alone.”
No one spoke as they watched the truck trundle around to the back of the house.
Ryan and Cal went outside and followed its path into a space between the barn and a chicken coop. If Dillon was trying to conceal it from anyone down by the road, he’d picked a good spot. The door swung open and the son of Master Simon jumped out.
“Hey,” he said with an easy grin. “Everybody okay from last night?”
Ryan shook his head. “Emma’s not back yet…”
“What?!” Dillon looked at him with concern. “What happened? I thought you guys were together.”
“We had to split up,” said Ryan, who offered a brief recounting of how he’d drawn off the pack and scaled a tree just in time.
“So you’ve no idea where she is? That’s not good.” Dillon turned toward the truck and motioned them to follow. “Let’s get going!”
“Where’re?” said Cal.
Dillon looked at Ryan. “Do you think you can find that bramble where you left her last?”
“Of course.”
Dillon nodded. “Good place to start. C’mon!”
44
The road twisted and turned up from the river basin as Ergel’s truck chugged along its rutted surface through the multitude of farms in the area north of Balmore.
Along the way he told Gibbel that they was on the lookout for two escaped human kids leased to Master Simon.
“Humanses…a boy and a girly, you say? And they’s leased?”
“Didn’t I just finish telling you this?”
“Yeah, but ‘leased’…is that like rented?”
“Pretty much exactly like rented.”
Ergel was thinking he’d boiled cabbages that was smarter than Gibbel.
“Leased from who?”
“From Falzon.”
Gibbel’s already bulging eyes bulged a bit more. “Falzon! Ooh, I bet he’d pay a pretty rewardation for their return!”
Ergel didn’t even want to think about what befall him if Gibbel ever told Falzon his leases was on the loose. He cuffed the dumb troll on the back of his head.
“Don’t you be even thinkin’ of goin’ to Falzon! Falzon ain’t never gonna know they’s gone, ’cause by the end of today they won’t be, if Ergel gots anything to says about it, and he does.”
Even though Ergel weren’t all that familiar with the country byways, he was able to track himself back to the sloping front yard and the roadside mailbox with the name “Jantz” hand-painted on the side. And then, because he was a very smart troll, he just rolled on by the property like he was nobody with a speckule of interest in the place. He followed the road
around to a hilly mound of trees where Henrel had done his spyifying on the place yesterday.
Reaching the ideal spot, he shut down the steamer and got out his double-eye scopers and focusated them on the Jantz place.
Gibbel had fallen into a deep snorified sleep during the journey, and Ergel saw no need to prod him awake at this point. The idea of having to conversate with a bonehead like Gibbel was more than he could tolerate right now.
He’d set up watch and endured hours dragging past him with nothing to show for it. The boredation of spyifying made him cranky and hungry and tired.
He wondered if what he was doing was worth anything. The farmhouse looked as active as a rock laying on the side of the road. And it went like that for another half hour until, of all things, he saw an Armagost Farm truck with Master Simon’s son at the wheel.
Well, well…what was this all about?
The truck didn’t stop until it rolled into the backyard by the barn, which Ergel knew was an attempt to hide it from prying eyes like his own self.
Ergel’s gots to be patient, he thought.
And no sooner than that, he saw the taller family boy run from the house with the lease boy! Ergel wanted to dance a victory jig. He’d hit the Johnny-pot!
If the other lease – the girl – was still in the house, then he’d have corralled them both and all would be well between Master Simon and his Chief Overseer – that being the one and only Ergel his own self. The idea of getting back into the favor of his boss made him chuckle. Leaning over in the cab of the truck, he slapped Gibbel across his flabby jowl, then smacked him across the back of his head.
“Wha–!” the bridge troll jumped up with a start. He had a dazed look in his flat yellow eyes, like the windows of an empty house. Nobody home.
“Wake up!” said Ergel. “Time to earn yer money!”
The words seemed to energize Gibbel as he straightened up in the seat and tried to look interested and vigilant.
“Tell me.”
“I needs you to get word to Armagost Farm, to Master Simon, that I found his lost human leases.”
Family Secrets Page 18
