by R. L. King
“Tricks?” I exchanged glances with Connor, who was looking as pissed and confused as I was. “Wait—so you’re admitting you drugged everybody’s drinks?”
His grin widened again. It looked almost unnaturally wide. This guy would have made a great Joker in some cut-rate production of Batman. “I’m not revealing my secrets. But trust me, that’s the least of your worries. I promise—nothing I did to them is permanent or harmful. They’ll all wake up feeling like they’ve just had a refreshing dream they can’t quite remember.” He pointed at the screen behind him. “Since this is a bachelor party, maybe it’ll even be one of those kind of dreams, if they’re lucky.”
I followed his gesture up to one of the TV screens, which had been playing a fairly standard porno, and my stomach clenched.
There was nothing standard about the movie now. Instead of your typical blonde with big boobs and hairy guy with a schlong like a fire hose, two tentacle creatures were going at it like they were trying to win a contest. The freakiest part about the whole situation was that they didn’t look like horrific monsters. It was more like Bob the one-eyed thing with eight legs and Sally the bright yellow, slimy blob of speckled goo were having their usual Friday-night roll in the hay. Or in this case, roll in the bright green glowing sand. It was like watching an X-rated version of Monsters, Inc. And—I’m not making this up—as I continued watching, Bob turned toward me, locked his single purple eye with mine, and gave me a thumbs-up, or a tentacles-up, or something, before returning to pounding a happily quivering Sally.
“Uh—” Connor had obviously noticed the change too, because he was staring at the TV as intently as I was.
But I couldn’t afford to pay attention to something on a TV when a real-live sicko was standing right here in front of me. “Listen up,” I told him. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but if you don’t stop this right fucking now, this guy and I are gonna take you apart. Got it?”
“Oh, I’ve got it. That’s the way big guys like you always respond—with your muscles instead of your brains. But I promise you, muscles aren’t going to get you out of this one.” He looked down at his watch. “And if I were you, I’d get moving. You don’t have a lot of time.”
“Don’t have a lot of time before what?” Connor demanded. “What’s going to happen?”
“Oh, no…” I muttered, as my brain spun out all kinds of doom scenarios. “You’ve hijacked the train. What are you gonna do—blow it up? Run us into another train?”
The bartender laughed, and this time it seemed genuine, not sinister. “Oh, no. No! That wouldn’t be any fun at all. And fun is what this is all about, isn’t it? A little non-standard entertainment for the party boy. No, nothing dangerous, I promise.”
“Well...what, then?” For the third time, I looked back at Al. Absurdly, I wondered if he could somehow be behind this—but that was crazy. He wouldn’t knock out all my party guests, and himself, just to pull off a joke on me. Al wasn’t the practical-joker type. I wouldn’t put it past Verity, but Verity wasn’t here.
He put his hands on the bar. “As you might have noticed, things have gone a little…different.” He changed his voice to sound like a scratchy recording. “Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out what’s going on and fix it before the time runs out.”
“Figure out what’s going on?”
“What time?” Connor demanded, looking around. “What did you do?”
“And what happens if we don’t?”
The bartender laughed and pointed toward the window. “Take a look outside.”
“It’s dark outside.”
“Humor me. Give it a try.”
With a last suspicious glance at him, I spun and went to the window, pressing my forehead against it. Outside it was still dark, but as I continued studying the view outside, something…changed.
“Wait…”
Connor was next to me, also peering out into the darkness. “What?”
“Do you see that?”
“See what?”
“The trees…they don’t look right. And are they moving?” I squinted harder. Before, we’d been heading through a forest of mostly pines and redwoods, but now the tree trunks seemed twisted and misshapen, and the clumps of leaves were leaning in toward the train like they were trying to grab it.
“Shit…you’re right. They are.”
I looked up, past the trees and into the sky. Now, instead of a velvety black field dotted with thousands of stars, it had a weird pinkish overlay. And the stars were different too. I wasn’t much of an astronomer, but I knew the Big Dipper and Orion when I saw them—hell, I’d seen them earlier tonight when I’d gone out on the platform between the cars.
They weren’t there anymore.
Oh, holy shit…
I whirled back around. “Where are we?”
The bartender didn’t seem affected by my loud voice. “Well, now, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? That’s why you need to figure out what’s going on before your time runs out.”
“Or what?”
He nodded toward the window. “Or…you might end up being stuck here—wherever here is—for a good long time. And there’s nothing I can do to help you with that. So you’d better get started.” He pulled two glasses down and poured something from a different bottle into each of them, then pushed them toward us. “I’d say your best bet is to get to the engineer. He may not be the same one you started with, but I promise, he’s driving the train. And he’s also the only one who can take it back where it belongs. Trust me—trying to beat your way in won’t work. You’ve got to use your wits, my friend, not your muscles. You should have a little easier time since you’ve got a friend to help you, but don’t waste time. Good luck!”
“Wait—” I began, running back toward the bar. But it was already too late: the smiling bartender stepped back and faded from view as if he’d never been there.
“Fuck!” I slammed my fists down on the bar, making the two glasses jump.
“We’re tryin’!” Bob protested from the TV screen. “It’d be easier if you two stopped bangin’ on things!”
Sally giggled. “He said ‘bangin’’.”
Okay, things had just gone completely off the deep end and done a swan dive into the Land of Weird Shit.
6
I looked at Connor. “This is insane. Where are we?”
He shrugged. “I dunno, man. Where could we be? You said you never blacked out and were only in the head for a couple minutes. How far could we go?”
I looked at Al and Stan again. “Wait a minute…”
“What?”
I let out a loud laugh that sounded crazy even to me. “Wait just a damn minute.”
“What?” Connor still looked nervous.
I stalked over to Al and stood over him. “Nice try, man. Real nice try. But I’ve figured out the joke.”
Al didn’t budge.
“What are you doing?” Connor asked.
I ignored him and grabbed Al’s shoulders, shaking him hard. “Al! Come on, dude. Joke’s over. Ha ha, real funny. You can stop pretending to be asleep now and knock it off.”
He still didn’t move. His head flopped back and forth when I shook him, and he mumbled something I couldn’t understand.
“Cut it out.” Connor grabbed Al from my grip and settled him back at the table with his head resting on his arms. “You’re gonna give him whiplash or something.”
“You don’t get it. He’s behind this. He’s not really out. He’s done something to make all this weird shit happen.”
He frowned at me. “Listen—he really is out. Trust me.”
“Huh?”
“I can tell. I can smell fear or agitation. People smell different when they’re unconscious. He isn’t faking. He’s out hard, and so is this other guy.”
I threw him a sharp look. “So why are you awake, then?”
He shrugged. “Probably because whoever that guy was didn’t account for my bear met
abolism. It’s really hard to put me down, or even get me drunk. Whatever he put in those drinks must have knocked me out temporarily, but my system flushes it out pretty fast.”
“Seriously,” said Bob from the TV. “Are you two gonna stand around talking all night? If you are, do it somewhere else. You’re cramping my style here.”
Sally giggled again. “He said ‘cramp.’” She began playing with one of Bob’s tentacles like a kitten with a piece of string.
“That…is some fucked-up shit right there,” Connor said. He dragged his attention back to me. “So what are we gonna do? I have no idea what that guy was talking about, do you?”
I wasn’t ready to give up my suspicions yet. “I still think Al’s behind this somehow. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was Verity. Al’s not much of a joker, but V is.”
“Verity’s not here, Jase. What, you think she’s hiding under a seat or something? If she was here, I’d have caught her scent.” He was still looking nervous. “Look—whatever the hell this is, I want to figure it out and get outta here. This whole thing is giving me the creeps.”
I stood on tiptoe and peered over the bar, but the bartender wasn’t there. I didn’t really expect him to be, but I had to be sure. Once again, I pulled out my phone and checked it for service. Not only were there no bars, but this time the familiar NO SERVICE message had been replaced by a line of characters that didn’t look like any language I’d ever seen in my life.
The two glasses the bartender had poured still sat next to each other on the bar. The liquid in one of them was blue, and the other was green. But if that dude thought I was gonna touch either one of them, he was crazy. “Come on,” I growled. “Let’s check out the rest of the train. Maybe we can wake up somebody else to help.”
Without waiting for him to reply, I hurried to the door between the bar and the dining car and yanked it open—
—Except I didn’t.
My arm wrenched hard as the door failed to budge.
Okay, this was getting worse. “Shit!”
Connor caught up with me. “What?”
“Door’s stuck. Won’t open. It opened fine a few minutes ago!”
“Get outta the way. Let me try.”
Reluctantly I backed off, but not before giving the door another hard tug. It might as well have been a bank vault for all it moved.
Connor grabbed it with both hands and pulled. From his expression, he expected to get it in one shot, but it didn’t move any more for him than it had for me.
“See? Not so easy, is it?” Even through the stress of this strange situation, I couldn’t help feeling a little satisfaction that big strong Bear Boy hadn’t done any better than I had.
He studied the door. There was a little window in the middle, but it was so dark that nothing was visible past it. “I could try breaking it…” he mused, starting to pull of his jacket.
“No. I don’t think it’ll work.”
“Why not? The window can’t be as strong as the door.”
“I just…don’t.” I sighed, moving back into the bar. “Whatever the fuck is going on here, it’s gotta be magic. Are you sure Al is out?”
“Yeah, man. Certain. Why? You honestly think he’s behind this?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him…but yeah, this is a lot even for a guy with as much power as he has.” I clenched my fists and tried to force my brain into gear. “But even if it’s not him, it’s still magic. It’s gotta be.”
“Why would somebody mess up a bachelor-party train with magic? That doesn’t make sense.”
I looked at Al again. “Maybe it does. He’s got a lot of enemies. Maybe this isn’t aimed at me. Maybe whoever’s doing this is after Al. It’s one of those things you just accept when you hang out with him—he really is a magnet for weird shit, and if you’re near him, it’s gonna get on you whether you want it or not.”
“So why isn’t he awake, then?” Connor still sounded dubious.
“Damn fucking good question.” I looked around the bar again. Nothing looked different; the bartender was still gone, and Al and Stan still slept away in their seats. Outside the windows, the strangely-shaped trees still flashed by. Were they going by faster now? I couldn’t tell, but it seemed like maybe they were. I glared up at Bob and Sally on the TV screen. I had no idea why I’d given them those names, but they seemed to have stuck. Sally lay back on her bed of glowing green sand, looking pleased with herself, while Bob puffed away on a long, writhing purple thing that might have been his world’s version of a cigarette. “Hey! You two! Can you hear me?”
Bob blinked and put his cigarette down. “Are you still here? Don’t you know you’re wasting time?”
Connor gaped. “You’re…actually talking to the weird porno tentacle things. And they’re answering.”
I ignored him. “Wasting time until what?”
“Can’t tell you. That’s part of the fun.” Behind Bob, Sally began to flow in his direction, engulfing the lower part of his body in her yellow ooze. He waved me off and dropped the cigarette. “Sorry, man, can’t talk. Got things to do.” He didn’t have eyebrows, but somehow gave the impression of a lecherous leer anyway.
“You gotta tell me something!” This was insane. I was yelling at a pornographic tentacle monster on a TV screen, expecting it to give me clues.
Sally stretched out a glob of goo and picked something up off a teetery table next to the sand. “Have a drink!” she said, raising one of her own in a glass straight out of Dr. Seuss’s worst nightmare. Her voice was like one of those stereotypical diner waitresses from New York City. “Maybe somethin’ will come to you! Now buzz off and let us get back to glorpin’!”
The TV screen faded to black, but the sound still came through loud and clear as they resumed their…er…glorping. I wished it didn’t. The sound was almost worse than the visuals.
I eyed the two glasses on the bar. Have a drink, she’d said.
Connor followed my gaze. “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “No way in hell I’m gonna drink that.”
I felt the same way he did, but we were running out of choices. “Let’s see if we can get any of the windows open.”
But of course we couldn’t. The windows were stuck shut, and so was the door in the back of the car. The only one that opened was the bathroom door, and nothing was different in there except that more sounds of Bob and Sally’s oozy boinking came through the speaker. I quickly shut the door and returned to the bar, studying the two glasses more closely.
They were the same size, and aside from color, the liquid inside looked the same. I picked one up and sniffed it.
“Smells like booze,” Connor said.
I almost asked him how he knew that since he hadn’t been near the glasses, but then I remembered: Bear. Super senses. Must be nice. “Good booze.” Whoever this guy was, he didn’t cheap out on the drinks any more than Al did.
Outside, something knocked hard on the window.
I spun. “What the fuck—did you hear that?”
He looked as nervous as I did. “Yeah.” He stalked over to the window and peered out.
“Do you see anything?”
“No. Just those freaky trees.”
Another knock came from the other side, even louder. Three knocks.
Something rattled the door at the far end of the car.
Something else knocked on the roof.
“Something’s out there!” Connor said. He didn’t sound as casual now.
“You think it can get in?”
From the TV, the sounds of Bob and Sally’s lovemaking intensified. It sounded almost like they were trying to hurry up and finish. Maybe so they could get the hell out of here before whatever it was showed up?
No, that was a crazy thought.
My heart pounded harder. What was out there, and what would happen if they got in?
I swallowed. “I’m gonna try the drink.”
“Are you nuts, man?”
“Maybe I am. But what oth
er choice do we have? We can’t get out of here, we can’t wake Al up, and now something’s tryin’ to get in.”
As if to emphasize my words, the knocking came again, this time from both sides of the train.
Connor went over to the table where Al and Stan were. He gripped Al’s shoulders and pulled him to a seated position. “Come on, man,” he pleaded. “Wake up. Give us some help here.” When Al didn’t respond, he pinched his arm.
Al mumbled something that sounded like a protest and shifted his arm, but otherwise didn’t move.
“Put him down, Connor,” I said, resigned. “I’m gonna do it.”
Before I lost my nerve, I went back to the bar and looked at the glasses. One bright blue, one emerald green. Which one should I pick? My mind returned to the fairy-tale books Verity used to read when we were kids—was one glass poison and the other one safe? There had to be some significance to the colors, but what was it?
Then I grinned. I couldn’t help it.
Come on. It couldn’t be that easy.
“What?” Connor demanded. He’d come over and stood next to me.
I pointed first at him, then at me.
“What?”
“Look at our shirts.”
Both of us wore casual shirts with our jeans. Mine was a dark blue polo, and his was a green plaid button-down.
His eyes widened. “No way. You think that’s the key?”
“Only one way to find out. Time for a leap of faith, I guess.” I snatched up the glass with the blue liquid and tossed it back in one swallow.
7
The first thing I noticed was that it was good stuff. I mean, seriously good stuff. I was more of a beer guy, but I knew top-shelf Scotch when I tasted it, even if it was blue.
I didn’t get much time to savor it, though, because as soon as the liquid hit my stomach, the whole room changed.
“Holy shit…” I breathed.
