by Ike Hamill
“Her ribbon goes right in there,” said Lynne, pointing. “What makes you think she hasn’t already destroyed the evidence?”
“She didn’t have much time,” said Jenko. He pulled the strap over his head and dropped his bag on the ground. Lowering to one knee, but keeping his head up, he dug into his bag and produced a flashlight for Lynne. “Just be careful.”
“No,” said Lynne. She folded her arms. “Just no.”
“Lynne,” began Jenko, “I’m here for your protection, and to collect some evidence. I’m not going to send you into danger. Well, not too much danger. A little trust here. Just a little.”
“Okay, but that girl was creepy,” said Lynne. “You should have heard the way she talked.”
“I’ve seen and heard plenty,” said Jenko. “Not much shocks me anymore.”
Lynne snatched the flashlight from his outstretched hand and stalked towards the small house. The peak of the roof rose to about her chest. She dropped to hands and knees when she was still five feet away. The darkness inside the doorway was unnerving. She looked back to Jenko. He was scanning the forest, gun raised and bag re-slung over his shoulder. Lynne pointed the flashlight into the black and shielded her eyes from the sunlight leaking through the tree canopy.
She couldn’t see anything. Just a bit of floor until it trailed off into the dark. Lynne crept closer and closer until she could make out the spot of the flashlight on the dark floor. She tried tracing the Ribbon as it disappeared into the black, but the flashlight didn’t help much, as if it had no effect on the little supernatural cabin.
“I can’t see anything,” she called over her shoulder to Jenko. “I’m going to have to put my head in." He didn’t reply.
Lynne shielded her eyes one more time and peered into the black. Crawling forward, she then sat back, kneeling in the doorway. The branches were woven to form the arch that made the door. Here and there little bits of cloth were interwoven, like a bird’s nest, Lynne thought. It gave the hovel a very natural, organic look that Lynne figured might seem inviting in a different setting. With her arms pulled in tight, Lynne leaned forward to stick her head through the opening. As her eyes adjusted, Lynne’s flashlight could finally pick out the walls and ceiling of the place. Directly in front of the door the floor sloped down, dropping with little steps, descending underground. The ribbon went that direction—down into the earth.
A blast of cool air came up from the hole, and it brought a fetid stench, like decaying flesh mixed with sulfur and burning metal.
Lynne gasped and cried out, pushing back from the doorway. She wasn’t alone. A clump of brown and black mice rushed out from the darkness and chased her out the door. Most scattered left and right, into the leaf litter, but one or two—confused or perhaps very aggressive—came right at Lynne and fled over her body as she scrambled back from the door. Just on the heels of the mice came the snakes. They were assorted shades of brown and green and they slithered over each other’s scaly skin, weaving intricate patterns and confusing Lynne’s eyes.
Lynne shrieked.
“What? What?” asked Jenko. He was at her side in an instant, kicking a three foot snake away from Lynne’s foot and offering a hand to haul Lynne to her feet.
She couldn’t stop brushing at her shirt and pants, still feeling the tiny mouse feet running up her clothes.
“What?” Jenko asked again. “It was just mice and snakes. We don’t even have any venomous snakes in Maine. What are you worried about? Tetanus?”
“It was gross,” said Lynne. “A lot of people don’t like snakes and mice.”
“You screamed like your hand was chopped off,” said Jenko. “I just expected more of a crisis. So what’s in there?”
“Steps,” said Lynne. She craned her neck around to the left and right to inspect her back, still looking for creepy things. “They go down into the ground.”
“Huh,” said Jenko. “Portal. Anything stored there? They usually have collections. Did you see anything collected?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t get much of a chance to look. There was an awful smell coming up from the stairs. I could hardly breathe,” said Lynne.
Jenko grabbed Lynne’s arm and dragged her backwards, away from the house—“Shit! Why didn’t you say so, let’s go!”
Lynne didn’t require any cajoling. She turned and ran, quickly outpacing Jenko. They traveled up the hill, back where they had come from. Lynne felt good running. It felt like the most natural thing she had done all day—running away from the danger.
“Lynne. Lynne,” Jenko hissed at her. She slowed and stopped, propping herself up against a tree, and turned around. He was hunched behind a bush, looking back down the hill at the little shack. She sighed and dropped to a crouch to return to his position. “I think something’s about to happen." He pointed at the shack with his dart gun. As they watched they felt the ground rumble. Down at the site, the trees shook violently, but up on the hill where they hid, the effect was subtle. It only lasted a second and then the center of the roof tugged downwards, sending a wave through the rest of the structure. Sticks, bark, and moss flew every direction and scattered. At the end of the second rumble, nothing was left but a slightly mussed-looking patch of ground.
“What happened?” asked Lynne.
Jenko held a finger to his lips and shushed her. Down at the former site of the hovel, white bits of paper fluttered to the ground. The ground rumbled one more time and then stopped. When they started chirping and rustling again, Lynne realized that all of the normal forest sounds had temporarily stopped.
“Wow,” said Jenko. “I’ve never been that close before. We got lucky.”
“What was it?” asked Lynne.
“The portal closed,” said Jenko. “She must have warned it. It closed the portal from the other side.”
“A portal to what?” she asked. “And what did she warn? I don’t understand.”
“Let’s go see what those papers are,” said Jenko. He stood and started down the hill.
Lynne stood, took a step after Jenko and then stopped, remembering the snakes. She scanned the forest floor, looking for a sign of them, and then noticed the little girl’s Residual Ribbon off to her left. It was still visible, but clearly fading. That little uncertainty got her feet moving—she didn’t want to get too far away from Jenko and his dart gun and little black bag of surprises. She caught up with him just as he reached the edge of the disturbed area.
Jenko knelt and picked up a scrap of torn newspaper—“It’s an ad for a car,” he said. He handed it to Lynne.
She read it aloud—“2008 Chevy Aveo White 4dr, All extras XH48A1123, 16k firm. And then there’s a phone number.”
“Anything strange about that?” asked Jenko. He collected several more scraps from the ground and stuffed the small stack into his bag.
“Yeah, who would bother advertising in a newspaper? There’s about a million places to advertise free online and you’ll probably get a better audience,” said Lynne.
“How about the price? You can get a brand new Aveo for that price. Why would someone pay that much for an oh-eight?” he asked.
“Oh,” said Lynne. “I didn’t even realize.”
“That’s what they’re counting on,” he said. “Plus, what’s that number again?”
“Which? XH48A1123?”
“Yeah,” said Jenko. “That’s some kind of code, I’m guessing. It probably authenticates the message and passes some kind of information. Someone’s using the newspaper to communicate with our little Changeling here. Or maybe they use it to track each other down.”
“Weird,” said Lynne.
“You bet,” said Jenko. “But at least it gives us a lead.”
“Aren’t we going to keep following the Ribbon? Or maybe try to dig where that stairway was? Aren’t those better leads?” asked Lynne.
“Stairway’s closed,” said Jenko. “No need to bother with that. We won’t find anything but dirt. I do want to follow the Ribbon, but I su
spect we’ll lose that trail pretty quickly. She probably had a good escape route planned for emergencies. Let me lead the way again, in case we find more traps.”
Lynne directed from the back. The ribbon became clearer as they followed it towards its source. It continued more or less straight, following the creek upstream. They didn’t run into any more traps. Ahead, a little bridge crossed the creek. As they approached they found that the bridge was part of a nicely groomed path. Fresh tracks from a four-wheeler led down the path.
“Looks like she had an accomplice,” said Jenko. “Which way did they go?”
“I don’t know,” said Lynne. “There’s nothing. The Ribbon ends here,” she pointed to the middle of the trail. “It just goes up in the air and then stops.”
“Okay,” said Jenko. “It’s time to stop screwing around here anyway. We’ve let that little devil set the pace for too long. Time to take back the reins. We’ll go back to the house, get the tape of that thing threatening the mom, and then get all this evidence back to the office so someone can figure it out.”
Lynne fished around in her jeans and then pulled out a small piece of plastic—“It wasn’t a tape, it was a memory card, and I’ve got it right here.”
“Excellent,” said Jenko. “You’re full of surprises today." He pulled out his phone and fiddled with the display for several moments. “Looks like this trail leads back to the road. Let’s go.”
They hiked fast on the trail. Jenko put away his gun when they started to see houses in the distance. The trail popped out just a half-mile down from where they had parked. Jenko focused on the street as they walked. When they got back to the car he kept walking, head down, across Carol’s lawn. When Lynne caught up, she finally saw what he was following—ATV tracks that led around the back of the house. He followed them to an empty shed. They knocked on the door of the house long enough to determine that Carol had left. Looking through the garage windows, they found that her car was gone.
“Stranger and stranger,” said Jenko. “I can imagine Carol being charmed or hypnotized or something, but then where’s her car?”
“Maybe that wasn’t Carol we met?” suggested Lynne.
“Say what?” asked Jenko. “Where’d you get that from?”
“I don’t know,” said Lynne. “Just a stray thought.”
When they got back to his car, Jenko had to pause before opening the driver’s door, as a bus went by. Lynne stared up at the windows of the big coach—it was one of those big tour busses, like the ones old ladies would take in groups to go down to the slot machines.
“Weird,” Lynne said on a breathy exhale. She barely made a sound.
“What?” asked Jenko. He hadn’t looked at the bus because he was pressed against the car as it went by.
“Nothing,” said Lynne. But it was something. In the window of that big tour bus, a familiar face was nearly pressed against the smoked glass. It was her own face looking back from that bus. Lynne shuddered and slipped into the passenger’s seat, closing the door fast behind her.
LYNNE AND JENKO SPENT THE REST OF THE MORNING and most of the afternoon in the Veyermin Group field office, filling out reports and submitting their evidence. Two men interviewed them separately and then together, comparing their stories and helping them remembering details of their encounters. Jenko clearly found the process tedious, but Lynne thought it was very helpful. The men probed at every detail of her account. She never felt that they didn’t believe her, but they pulled at the threads, uncovered inconsistencies, and plumbed the depth of her memory. Lynne resolved to be a better witness in the future. They wanted to know what she saw, heard, smelled, and felt.
She found that when she really concentrated, she could picture entire scenes and re-live them, pulling out information that hadn’t even made an impression earlier. The process wore her out. By the time they were excused, she was almost asleep on her feet. One of the interrogators offered her a voucher for a cab, but Jenko said he would drive her home. She took him up on the offer.
The questions weren’t over. As soon as he pulled out from the parking lot, Jenko started asking his own.
“So you’re the real deal then?” Jenko asked.
“Huh?” asked Lynne. She was leaning all the way back and to her right, so her head was cradled by the taught seatbelt. His question was the only thing keeping her from drifting off to sleep.
“Back in the woods,” said Jenko. “You could have either been the best tracker around, or you were actually seeing some kind of trail left by that thing. Those are the only two explanations. I wasn’t a hundred percent until I saw you in those interviews. You weren’t hiding anything at all. So you must be the real deal.”
“We worked together all day yesterday,” said Lynne. She kept her eyes closed, hoping the conversation would end quickly. “What about the cat? I saw that.”
“That could have been anything,” said Jenko. “I worked with my share of fakes, and at least a half-dozen of them could have muddled their way through yesterday.”
“Can we talk about this tomorrow?” asked Lynne. “I’m kinda wiped out.”
“Yeah, that’s the other thing,” said Jenko. “I’ve heard that you guys get really worn out by the whole experience. The clairvoyance takes its toll.”
“I hate that term,” said Lynne.
“Whatever you call it,” said Jenko. “I just hope you don’t think that a little bit of natural talent means more than skill and experience.”
“Whatever,” said Lynne. Jenko was mercifully silent for a while and Lynne managed to drift off. The tight turns and stops woke her up as they approached her house, but she pretended she was still asleep so he wouldn’t start up another conversation.
“You’re home,” said Jenko, coming to a stop in her driveway.
“Oh?” she said. “Thanks.”
“Next time,” he offered.
Lynne blinked her eyes clear and pushed out of the car so she could drag herself up the walk. No other cars graced the driveway or the street. When Jenko pulled away, Lynne was alone at her house and wanted nothing more than to take a peaceful nap in the late afternoon sun. A note on the dining room table interrupted the trip back to her room. Signed by both her roommates, the note complained about her new cat. They chastised Lynne for not consulting them on the adoption and for leaving the crying cat for them to deal with while she went off to work. At the bottom, a scrawled post script admitted that they had put the cat outside to quell its protests.
Lynne sighed. She went to the back door and surveyed the yard. There was, of course, no sign of any cat. Lynne cracked the door, but closed it again when she realized that she hadn’t even picked a name for the cat. Shuffling back to her bedroom, Lynne cursed her insensitive roommates. As soon as she opened the door to her room, she stopped her inner whining. Her room was trashed. The cat had shredded her pillows and comforter, inflicted deep gouges on the door, and pulled dozens of articles of clothing from the closet. Pushing the carnage of fluff to the floor, Lynne stretched out on her bed to find her nap.
LYNNE WOKE SOMETIME AFTER DARK. Her first instinct was to find the cat and punish it for waking her up. It wouldn’t be hard, she could hear it mewing just outside her window. It would probably come right in if she just opened the window nearest her bed.
It was after ten. Blue light flickered under her door. Lynne was missing movie night with her roommates, which meant they had eaten already. Without her. She flicked on the light and rolled onto stiff legs so she could haul the window open.
Her new cat pushed through a hole in the screen and found its way into her arms. Lynne wondered if she still had cat food in the pantry. She was already in the hall by the time she remembered to be angry with the cat. She moved quietly, hoping to not draw any attention from her roommates. It almost worked.
“You let that thing back in?” asked Barry.
“It’s mine,” said Lynne.
She couldn’t hear answer from the living room, but could hear the
two of them whispering to each other. Once she found a can of food, the cat wolfed down its dinner as Lynne stood propped against the counter. She drifted off again and again, waking up only to catch herself from falling. Even to sit down would be tempting sleep, so she stood. When it finished dinner, the cat jumped up on the counter and then stepped into Lynne’s arms. She clutched the cat tight and shuffled back to her bedroom.
The cat woke her up from a sound sleep. It was growling. The rumble started deep within the cat, and came out as an evil protest. Lynne let go immediately, thinking that she’d been clutching the soft creature too dearly. She turned on her bedside lamp and watched the cat stalk towards the window. Lynne felt the hair on the back of her neck spring up. The window was open a crack.
The cat hunched to sniff the air coming in through the crack. Its shoulders were tensed, even though there was nowhere to pounce.
“What is it?” asked Lynne. Hearing her own tentative voice freaked Lynne out even more.
The cat turned its head to the right and Lynne heard what it was tracking. Tiny footsteps ran outside, down the walkway that ran parallel to the house. The cat scrambled to the other window, on the adjacent wall, and resumed its growling vigil. That window was open a couple of inches. Lynne pushed herself upright and sat cross-legged on the bed, making sure she could see all three windows. The cat’s tail flicked back and forth and it shuddered, perhaps with anticipation.
Fear was beginning to roll through her body in waves. The image of little Donna on the video tape, somehow looking at her through the view finder, kept coming to mind. Lynne held perfectly still and tried to see past the window, and hear past the growling cat. She wanted to grab the cat, or call it to her lap, but was afraid that it was the only thing keeping the things in the night at bay.
Through the slightly open window, Lynne heard a little voice call to her.
“Miss Benson,” the voice said.
