The Smiley-Face Witches

by George Traikovich

  Grady laughed. “Dude, ya got that power now. It’s called halitosis!”

  They were almost halfway back when Newton saw someone else running toward them from the direction they’d first entered. “What now?”

  “It’s me!” Clementine shouted.

  “Did ya miss your train?” Spider asked.

  “Odd Botkins!” she gasped.

  “What?” Newton said.

  She spun him back toward the tunnel mouth.

  “That’s the trackwalker,” Newton said.

  Spider agreed. “Yeah. Yeah. He just chased us away.”

  “Take another look!” Clementine said. “Clark Bent…the same Botkin that was at the bus stop…the one who got shot.”

  There was no mistaking Clark Bent’s mechanical strut. “H-how’s that p-possible?” Newton asked. “Pink Braids shot ‘im in the chest.”

  “Regeneration,” Grady muttered, but the others ignored him.

  The warning whistle sounded, the rails beneath their feet rumbling in anticipation.

  Movement near the access door focused Spider’s attention. The remaining Botkins stormed through the opening six deep, cutting off their retreat. “Clark Bent musta called for back-up.”

  “What do we do?” Grady asked.

  The next whistle sounded. The rumbling got louder.

  “How many whistles we get?” Clementine asked.

  “Depends,” Newton said.

  “Depends on what?” Clementine asked.

  Newton wet his dry lips. “On whether the train is coming to a stop or passing through.”

  “What’s the difference?” she asked.

  “About fifty miles per hour,” Newton said.

  “What do we do?” Grady repeated.

  “Not sure,” Newton said. “Maybe we…”

  “Head for the tunnel opening,” Clementine said, “We can outrun ‘em like we did at the bus stop!”

  Clark Bent closed the distance while they wasted precious seconds going back and forth. Another few steps and it wouldn’t matter what they decided.

  Grady whipped off his sunglasses and slipped on the Hypno-Specs he’d stashed in his pocket. “Dude, I got an idea.”

  “What are ya doing?” Spider asked.

  “If the Lois Lane effect works on us, then it’ll work on him,” Grady said.

  Clementine wasn’t so sure. “How?”

  “I’ll be all like, nonchalant and sneak past him,” Grady said.

  “And then?” Clementine asked.

  Grady rehearsed a few of his favorite kung-fu moves. “And then take ‘em out from behind.”

  “That’s your plan?” Clementine said.

  Grady didn’t answer. Instead, he strutted toward Clark Bent, and what she was convinced was certain doom.

  “Come on!” she begged, but neither Newton nor Spider budged.

  Clark Bent crept forward until he was close enough for them to see the jagged scars the Acolyte’s blast left.

  Clementine prepared an alternative strategy. She grabbed a broken beer bottle half-buried in the gravel and cocked her arm.

  The Botkin took a tentative step toward Grady, and then another, and then creaked to a halt a few feet short.

  Grady stopped when the Botkin did, though not for the same reason, and nobody said anything for a few seconds for fear of breaking the spell.

  “What happened?” Clementine whispered. “Why’d he stop?”

  “Because he did,” Grady said.

  “Not you,” Clementine said.

  Newton circled the dueling pair, trying to figure out what immobilized the Botkin. “Feedback.”

  “What?” Clementine whispered.

  “Maybe the glasses are canceling each other out,” Newton said. “Maybe because the Specs were Clark Bent’s they’re tuned to his frequency or something.” It sounded like more of his pseudo-science babble but was as good an explanation as any.

  Spider checked the shrinking gap between them and the Botkins advancing from the rear. “Yeah. Yeah but we still gotta get outta here!”

  “Should I move?” Grady asked.

  Newton grabbed him by the shoulders and guided him forward. “No, I’m gonna aim ya.”

  “What are ya doing?” Clementine asked.

  “Grady’s our gun,” Newton said. “But we need to aim ‘im in the right direction.”

  It took her a second to follow his logic. “Grady has to keep eye contact to keep the feedback loop goin’.”

  Clark Bent’s posse closed the gap with each twitchy step. Spider grabbed a handful of jagged rocks from the gravel bed and hurled them at their pursuers in vain. “Faster!”

  Clementine ran ahead of Newton and Grady, calling out the rail ties ahead of time so they didn’t trip. “Coming up on one to your left! No your left!”

  They were almost parallel to Clark Bent by then so Newton slowed his pace. He didn’t know what angle would break the feedback loop but he knew it would.

  Newton’s feet tangled with Grady’s and both went down.

  Clark Bent turned and reached for them, long gnarly fingers grasping...

  Grady recovered and refocused--The Botkin twitched and wound down.

  “You good?” Grady asked.

  “Good,” Newton said.

  Clementine helped him to his feet and this time, they guided Grady backward together.

  The next whistle was the loudest yet because it was coming from the train—time was running out.

  Spider broke for daylight, making it out of the tunnel and up the track’s steep embankment on the second try. He turned back toward the mouth once up top. “Your almost there!”

  The train was close now, but so was the exit. Newton pulled him backward another few steps and Grady felt the transition from shade to sunlight on his face. They were out.

  Spider reached down to help Clementine up the embankment.

  Grady kept his gaze trained on Clark Bent. “Hurry!”

  Newton came next, but couldn’t get any traction on the embankment’s gravel base. “Save yourselves!”

  “Jump!” Clementine shouted.

  “LeBron can’t jump that high!” Newton insisted, but tried again.

  Clementine snagged his belt the second time and Spider helped her pull him up.

  The massive locomotive dominated Grady’s peripheral vision, blue and gold letters spelling out Norfolk-Southern resolving into crystalline clarity faster than he expected. The track shuddered, his bones vibrating in sympathy. “Any time!”

  He held out his hands and Spider grabbed hold, yanking him from the tracks.

  “My specs!” Grady shouted, but he could only watch them tumble out of reach.

  The train charged out of the tunnel before Clark Bent turned to face it. He held on for a few seconds before losing his grip and bouncing across the tracks for the next mile and a half.

  ***

  “And then Grady was like, dude, I got this,” Clementine said, “and then he put the Hypno-Specs on and stared that sucker down like a boss!”

  Grady demonstrated the move again, using his shades instead of the Specs he’d lost. “And then I said…what are the odds, Botkin?”

  “Don’t remember that part,” Clementine said.

  “Thought of it on the way back,” Grady admitted.

  Nobody questioned Clementine about why she’d changed her mind and come back. They were just glad to have her, though none of them would say so out loud.

  Lazy-Eye Susan was back too, though not quite in the same way. She emerged from the back of the Windmill wearing the same kind of flowing bohemian dress they remembered from before, and it was like she’d never left. “Guess that explains how ya got away. Reckon that also explains why ya got the Botkin laid out across the sawhorse table like at a wake.”

  That they’d dragged the dead man back with them at all troubled her. But rather than questioning their motives, she decided to leave the psychology to the psychologists and figure
out what to do with the broken Botkin.

  Newton turned toward the guest of honor. “Something ain’t right about this guy.”

  Clementine agreed. “Never heard of nobody getting shot in the chest and coming back to work the next day.”

  “Can’t be the same guy,” Spider said, but the heavy scarring said otherwise.

  Grady grabbed a carpet knife from the workbench. “We gotta do an autopsy.”

  “Cut ‘im up?” Clementine said. “Gross. No way.”

  “Let’s not start cutting straight away,” Susan said. She unbuttoned the Botkin’s jacket and pulled the strange fabric back. “Feels warm.”

  Newton felt the material between his fingertips. “Soft but feels more like plastic than cloth. The pattern kinda reminds me of the solar panels we messed around with in physics this year.”

  Grady poked at the rubber tubing woven into the material’s lining. “His suit’s got built in defrost? Nice.”

  Susan took Clark Bent’s broken glasses off, giving them a close-up look at their pursuer for the first time.

  His crude features looked like they’d been chiseled with a butter knife, sharp edges worn down so that no hard corners remained. He appeared human, but they weren’t as convinced of his lineage as they were before.

  Susan lowered her bifocals. “Wonder how come there’s no blood…”

  Newton dabbed at the green crust that formed where the train severed his leg. “Maybe the cold froze ‘im before he could bleed or something.”

  “This don’t look right,” Susan said. “Hand me that knife.”

  Grady passed her the blade and watched her cut into the Botkin’s forearm. “What’s that green stuff oozing outta there? Blood?”

  “Looks like the goop on Newton’s coat,” Clementine said.

  “Chlorophyll,” Susan said.

  “Chlorophyll?” Newton said, “But that’s like plant blood. This guy is a plant?”

  “A plant,” Susan agreed, “but not like any plant we ever seen. Smell that?”

  Newton took a whiff. “Smells like cut grass.”

  “That’s the Chlorophyll,” Susan said. “Try again.”

  Newton inhaled again, slowly and deliberately. The tell-tale odor was faint and almost imperceptible, but there was no mistaking it. “Ammonia?”

  “Enzyme Seven,” Spider muttered. “He’s a Crypto.”

  “This fella is a Crypto,” Susan agreed, “but not like any we seen before.”

  “Guess that explains the pattern in his suit,” Newton said.

  Grady’s face went blank. “It does?”

  “The cells must help him with photosynthesis,” Newton theorized. “The material must store sunlight and help him convert it to energy somehow.”

  “But he looks human,” Clementine said, “even without the glasses.”

  “Ever hear tell of the Chameleon Rose? Or the Werewolf Cactus? Or the Silly-Putty Petunia?” Susan asked.

  “Who hasn’t?” Clementine said.

  “All of ‘em can disguise themselves to fool bugs and birds and spiders and whatnot,” Susan said, “kind of a self-defense mechanism.”

  “How?” Spider asked.

  “Well…by changing their colors…or folding their leaves, tucking their roots in and so on,” Susan said.

  “Still kinda hard to believe,” Newton said. “Even after all the crazy stuff we seen ‘til now.”

  Susan steadied her hand for another cut, but the Botkin unfolded like a flower before steel touched skin. She uncurled Clark Bent’s gnarly digits, now more like roots than fingers close-up. “How ‘bout now?”

  They jabbed at Clark Bent’s neatly coifed hair, which was the texture and consistency of moss, though not the color. His waxy skin, which appeared smooth and monotone in the daylight, became green and variegated inside the Windmill.

  Seeing the Botkin revert to form before their eyes confirmed his ancestry, but questions remained.

  “How can a plant move around like a human?” Clementine asked. “Or drive a car?”

  “They don’t have brains,” Newton said, “don’t ya need brains for all that?”

  “Plants have a Radicle,” Susan said, “which is kind of a simple brain. They might not be able to do much more than what you described.”

  “Guess Grimsby didn’t start out experimenting with humans right away,” Newton said, but that didn’t explain why he’d started with plants in the first place.

  “Plants share put near twenty-five percent of our DNA,” Susan explained, “And don’t forget what Enzyme Seven did all by itself. All it needed were some DNA and it took over, like a parasite. Like it did with Jamphibian.”

  “They don’t have Drew,” Clementine said.

  “What?” Grady asked. “What do ya mean?”

  “She’s right,” Newton said, “if they did, they wouldn’t keep coming after us.”

  “Then we still don’t know who’s got ‘im,” Spider said.

  “But now we know who doesn’t,” Newton said.

  “Yeah. Yeah. But why’d the Botkins come after us at all?” Spider asked.

  “Might be they’re having the same sorta problems with Enzyme Seven that Frost and his lackeys was,” Susan said, but she didn’t believe it. Grimsby’s first experiments predated WWII. Surviving that many years in the wild meant that they’d figured out a solution. The Botkins were after something else.

  “Train musta broke his jaw,” Clementine said. She pushed the crooked mandible back into place, but it opened like a cash register instead.

  The unexpected animation startled Newton, but he inched back toward the table. “My grandma’s dentures do that all the time.”

  “They do?” Clementine said

  “Well…They fly out, but they don’t come back in.”

  The teeth were laid out like a typewriter, so Susan started typing. “Saw this kinda thing back at the monastery. These fellas must be linked to one another by some kinda network or something.”

  “Gotta take some real skills to tap out messages just using your tongue,” Clementine said.

  “Yo, yo. We could use the keyboard to mess with these guys,” Spider said, “send out messages that…”

  “No,” Susan said. “Best not to mess around with things ya don’t understand. Besides, I got something to show ya...”

  She disappeared into the back of the Windmill before Spider could finish his argument.

  “What’s all this other junk?” Newton lisped. The steamer trunks weren’t there when they left, though he conceded they might have been hidden behind the plywood sheets.

  Clementine blew the dust off the trunk’s lid and read the name stenciled across the top. “Ronco the Great.”

  Newton turned the latch and popped the lid open. “Old newspapers…Doll heads…a wooden leg…a baseball glove.”

  “No way,” Spider said.

  Newton showed him the glove. “Way.”

  Spider reached past him and pulled the antique prosthetic out of the trunk. Leather straps let the owner buckle the leg into place above the knee, though the years had tarnished the brass and the wood smelled like sweaty feet.

  Newton pulled the matching steel hook out of the trunk and put it on over his own hand. “Weird.”

  “There’s more over here,” Clementine said.

  Grady pulled a musty tuxedo out and held it up against his chest, judging the fit. “What else is in there?”

  “More tuxedos,” Spider said, “Think maybe this guy was a magician or something?”

  Grady tried the jacket on. He reached up his sleeve and out came a string of scarves. “Maybe.”

  Spider sniffed at the silk carnation pinned to his lapel and caught a squirt of tepid water right between the eyes. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Clementine drew a cutlass from inside the trunk, swinging the blade close enough to Newton’s face to make him flinch. “What do ya think he did with this?”

  Newton pushed the curved blade away from
his face. “Probably stuck it in a basket.”

  “What do ya mean?” she asked.

  “They’d put a girl in a basket and pretend to run her through,” Newton said. He put his hand against the tip to demonstrate, and pressed down.

  “Ahh!”

  His shriek brought Susan running out of the back. She traced the blood splatter from the discarded blade to Newton’s hand and figured out the rest.

  “Don’t look too bad,” she muttered.

  “Here, let me,” Grady said, and pulled more scarves out of his sleeve.

  Susan grabbed another cutlass and waved it back and forth. “One sword is always real. That’s how they fool the audience. The rest are fake.”

  They watched her wave the blade back and forth with practiced skill. “Holds up as long as you’re swinging and not stabbing,” she said, and plunged the blade into Spider’s stomach.

  He opened his mouth to scream but the blade telescoped against his body before the sound made it out.

  “No way!” he shouted. He took the blade from her hand and repeated the trick for his own amusement.

  Newton wrapped the silk scarf around his cut and pressed down. “Wish ya woulda told me that before.”

  “Let me guess, Ronco was one of your ex-husbands?” Clementine said.

  “Number three, if’n your keeping track,” Susan said. “Reckon you can tell his occupation.”

  Spider waved the hook hand at her. “Yeah. Yeah. Was gonna say magician, but then I was gonna say maybe pirate.”

  “Or pirate magician,” Grady said. “How cool would that be?”

  “He lost his hand during one of his tricks,” Susan said. “Lost his leg during another…He weren’t a very good magician.”

  “Dude, why’d ya bring all this junk with ya?” Grady asked.

  “I was looking for something and didn’t know which trunk it were in,” Susan said. “Didn’t wanna risk hangin’ ‘round my house any longer than I needed to in case I were being followed.”

  Clementine cleared her throat. “Did ya have something to show us?”

  “Glad ya reminded me,” Susan said.

  They followed her back to the workshop she’d set up, as much a nest as anything else, cluttered with toiletries and personal effects she’d stowed like a pack-rat.

  “What is it?” Spider asked.

  The slide projector sat inside a gimbal balanced on top of a sturdy wooden tripod four feet high. Longitudinal and latitudinal brass rings encased the assembly like a gyroscope, letting the slotted carousel tray rotate around the tripod’s center axis and pass slides between the lamp and a complex lens system taken from some medieval optometrist’s office.