by R. L. King
But so far, the annoying bartender had been right—nothing dangerous had happened. Much as I didn’t like it, it seemed like the only way out of here was to play through his sick little game and hope he was telling the truth.
I let out a loud sigh, glanced at the neat rows of bottles behind the bar and briefly considered pouring a glass, but decided things were freaky enough with me mostly sober. “Yeah.”
The door opened easily when I tried it, just like it had when I’d pushed through it before all this stuff had started. Instead of bars, the vestibule area was enclosed except for narrow windows running its length at around my eye level on both sides. I tried to get a look outside, but the train was moving so fast now I couldn’t see anything but flashes of light streaking by. The sight made me a little queasy, so I jerked my head back and pushed open the door on the other side. It opened easily too, revealing darkness.
“That does not look good,” Connor said from behind me.
“No, it does not.” I remembered that my phone had a flashlight, so I pulled it out and hit the button.
Nothing happened. In fact, the screen didn’t even light up. Either the battery was dead or something was preventing me from using it—I’d have believed either one of them. MFM, I told myself in disgust. More fucking magic.
“Do you smell anything?” I asked him.
“In there? Not a damn thing. It’s like the whole room is a black box.” He sniffed, looking around nervously. “But out here…there’s something weird out there, man, and I don’t want to be out here with it. I’d rather be in the dark.”
That was good enough for me. Unlike Al, my curiosity for freaky shit ended right around the point where the freaky shit was likely to eat me, suck me into an extradimensional void, or otherwise ruin my day. Plus, I knew from Amber that Connor wasn’t the type to show fear easily.
“Okay, here goes.” With my hands out in front of me to make sure I didn’t run into anything (or anyone), I took a decisive step into the room.
Nothing happened. The lights stayed off, and the darkness seemed to flow around me. It felt like it was pressing in on me from all sides. Suddenly, I was certain Connor was no longer behind me. “Connor? You there? Say something!”
But his voice came from a couple feet back, strong and steady and just a little bit nervous. “I’m right here. Coming in now. You know the second I step into this room the door’s gonna lock behind us, right?”
I did know that. But still… “Better than being out there with—whatever’s out there. Come on in.”
A second later, I felt a presence behind me, and heard Connor’s breathing. And, just as he’d predicted, there was a soft click as the door latched.
The lights came up.
I had no idea what I expected to see—hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover we were floating around in an aquarium or standing on the top of Mount Everest—but what I didn’t expect to see was the train car looking like…a normal train car. There wasn’t any graffiti glowing on the walls, and if the strange twisted trees were still outside, the windows were too dark to see them.
That was where the “normal” part ended, though.
This was still the dining car, with a small galley at the far end and tables lined up along either side, but it looked different from before. Fancier, for one thing. Where before there’d been a few small tables scattered around with empty wing baskets and beer glasses strewn across them, this place looked like something out of one of those fancy movies where everybody dressed up and drank tea. There were eight tables in all, each one with four carved wooden chairs. A white cloth covered each table, and they all had a full setting of silverware, wineglasses, and cloth napkins, much more high-class than what had been there when we’d first seen it. In front of each place setting was one of those silver covered dome things they use to keep food warm, and in the middle of the tables were two bottles of wine. A wide aisle separated the rows.
In each chair sat a headless figure.
My heart pounded harder.
“Uh…Jase…you’re seeing this, right?”
It was a fair question. Based on what had happened so far, it was entirely possible that each of us was seeing a completely different scene. Instead of answering, I walked up to the nearest figure and looked at it more closely.
At first, I’d thought it was a real body, and was preparing myself for seeing something horrific. But on closer inspection, it was obvious it was a dummy. Like all the others, it was dressed in a plain white jumpsuit, complete with gloves and boots. A long screw stuck out of the top of its neck.
“Jason…”
“Yeah. I see the dummies.” The other three at the table I was standing in front of had screws coming out of their heads too, but other than that, they all looked identical. A quick walk up and down the aisle confirmed that the rest of them were too. All of them were male, if it even mattered.
“But what the hell are they for?” He picked one up, hefting it for weight, and then sat it back down in its chair.
I had both no idea and the uncomfortable feeling that any minute now, they were all going to get up and start shuffling toward us like a horde of headless zombies. Night of the Living Dummies or something. “You got me. Do you see any identifying info on their suits?”
“Nope, all the same over here.”
He stopped checking out the dummies and walked to the far end of the car, where he tried the galley door. When he found it was locked, he headed back down the aisle. “Maybe we’re supposed to screw something on their heads. But I don’t see anything like that, do you?”
“Nope.” I even looked up, but saw nothing unusual about the car’s ceiling. At least it seemed like we’d left the tentacle orgy in the other car. To my surprise, I kind of missed them.
“Welcome to Chez Nostalgia,” said a voice from the other end of the car.
The bartender stepped out of the galley. He wasn’t dressed like a bartender now, but like a classic, old-fashioned waiter in a short white jacket, white gloves, and black pants and bow tie. He had a folded towel over one arm. “Two for our next seating? You’re in luck—there isn’t much of a wait tonight.”
“What the hell is this?” I stepped away from the table and glared at him. “You know, I’m getting pretty sick of your perverted little puzzles.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” He didn’t look sorry. “If you’ll just wait a few minutes, we’ll get you seated. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at our evening’s selections. We’re running a bit behind schedule, so it will help if you know what you want.” He backed up and disappeared into the galley again. The door shut behind him.
I strode over and tried to yank it open, but of course it didn’t budge.
“Great.” I turned back, looking down the row at the tables. None of the dummies had moved, thank goodness.
Connor was studying one of the tables. “Make our selections? I don’t even see any menus, do you?”
“No. But wait.”
“What?”
“I’m going on the assumption that this is some kind of freaky escape-room thing. And if it is, the one thing my friends told me is that anything could be a clue.”
“So?”
“So…that guy didn’t say to ‘make our selections.’ He said to ‘take a look at our selections.’”
Connor’s thick brows furrowed. “I still don’t get it. How can we do that if there’s no menu?”
Damn, but I missed having Al’s brain along for the ride. Or even Verity’s. Connor wasn’t a dumb guy by any means, but like most bear shifters, he approached the world in a very straightforward way. Amber had told me this—she favored her fully human parent, but her brothers had picked up more of the bearish traits. Al, on the other hand, ate puzzles like this for lunch, and his mind went in more directions than the New York City subway system. Maybe that’s why the bartender or whoever was behind this whole thing had made sure he was out of action.
“Because the s
elections might already be on the tables.” I pointed at the silver covers, which looked big enough to easily hide full-sized chickens under them. I grabbed the one closest to me and whipped it off the plate, hoping I wasn’t wrong. If I was, I had no idea where to go next, and the bartender didn’t seem to be offering any hints.
Behind me, I heard Connor gasp, but I didn’t. A small part of me had suspected what I might find under there.
A head sat on the plate, surrounded by a carefully arranged garnish of lettuce. Like the dummies, though, it wasn’t a lifelike head. More of a cartoonish representation of one. A moment later, I realized I recognized it.
It was Dave, one of my high-school buddies I’d been drinking with less than an hour ago. With its shaggy blond hair, crooked nose, and big ears, it couldn’t be anybody else.
As soon as I made the connection, the head’s eyes opened, and it shot me a wide, drunken grin.
“Dave…?” I ventured. “Is that you, dude?”
Dave’s cartoon head didn’t answer. His hazel eyes blinked and looked around as if he was interested in his surroundings, but other he didn’t speak.
“Is it too late to jump off the train?” Connor asked with a nervous chuckle. “This just keeps getting creepier.”
Carefully, I reached out with both hands and grasped Dave’s head. When he didn’t appear to mind, I lifted it free of the lettuce and tilted it so I could see the bottom. Sure enough, there was a hole, the same size as the screws on the dummies. I held my breath, settled Dave’s head on the dummy sitting in the same chair, and slowly spun it onto the screw.
Dave’s face changed, making an exaggerated, comical expression of sexual pleasure each time his face came around. When I finished, he ran his tongue around his lips, gave a happy sigh, and looked up at me with satisfaction. Then he went back to studying the room.
“Dude, that is wrong,” Connor said.
“It’s wrong…but it’s kinda funny, too.” I couldn’t help but return cartoon-Dave’s goofy O-face grin—it was infectious.
“You have a strange sense of humor, man. Wait, wasn’t that guy on the train tonight?”
“That is the truth. And yeah, he was.”
He looked at the other three covers on the same table. “So you’re thinking…all of these have heads under them?”
“That’s the theory. Come on, let’s find out.”
“That’s okay. This is all you, man.” He took a step back. “I’m serious—those heads are creeping me out big-time.”
“Fine.” Obviously Connor hadn’t dealt with the kind of magical freakshows that had become a regular part of my life, even if he did hang around with people who turned into bears. I guess I couldn’t blame him for that. I pulled off the cover next to Dave, expecting another head.
And there was another head—but not one I recognized this time. A dark-skinned man with a black beard and piercing dark eyes gazed up at me, looking as mellow as if he were waiting for a bus.
“Who’s that guy?” Connor asked.
“No idea. That’s weird…” I moved on to the next cover. Now I had no idea what I’d find.
Another head. This one had darker skin than the last one, along with molded dreadlocks spread out among the lettuce. I recognized him as Ty Mendez, one of the guys I’d met while working on cases at my PI firm. His trademark Ray-Ban sunglasses perched on the top of his head, leaving his eyes uncovered. He looked me up and down in his usual careful way, then almost seemed to shrug—at least as much as a head can shrug—and settled back into his bed of garnish. At least he had the good grace not to look like he was having good sex when I screwed his head on his dummy. Like Dave, he seemed mildly interested in his surroundings once his head was on straight.
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “Looks like we’re on the right track. We’ve gotta find all the heads and screw them back on. It’ll go a lot faster if you help.”
“No way.” Connor backed off. “I told you—I’m not touching those things.”
“You want me to tell Amber you chickened out?”
“I’m not a chicken just because I don’t want to touch a bunch of severed heads.”
I made chicken noises. “They’re just cartoon heads, dude. They don’t even feel real. Come on—a big guy like you is afraid of oversized Barbie heads? Wait till Amber hears. Hell, wait till Jonah and Micah hear.”
That did it. Amber had also told me—in strictest confidence, of course—that Connor had always suffered from a touch of “little brother syndrome.” As big and intimidating as he looked, his two older brothers were even bigger.
“Fine,” he said, though he still sounded reluctant. He gingerly plucked the final cover from the table.
I was about to turn to the next table and reach for another one when I caught a look at what he revealed. “Holy shit, that’s Al.”
There was no mistaking Al’s bright blue eyes, sharp features, and spiky dark-brown hair. He seemed amused by the whole situation, looking down at his bed of lettuce with a raised eyebrow.
I picked up his head and stared into his eyes. “Can you talk to me, Al? Can you say anything?”
“Alas, poor Yorick…” Connor said with a snicker.
Al cut his gaze sideways toward him and rolled his eyes. But he didn’t say anything.
“Come on. Blink twice if you have any idea what’s going on here.”
He didn’t blink, either, but just kept on looking at me.
“Okay. I guess we’d better get moving. If we need to put all these heads on bodies, we have a long way to go.”
“All these heads? That’s gonna take forever.”
“You got a better idea?”
Al rolled his eyes again and shot me a knowing smile.
“Okay, fine,” Connor said reluctantly. “Let’s get it over with, then.”
I had my suspicions about what we’d find when we were done, and by the time we’d uncovered all the plates and screwed all the cartoon heads onto bodies, I discovered I’d been right: every plate had a head, nineteen of which corresponded to the guests on the train and thirteen of which I’d never seen before. The nineteen known ones included all my buddies from high school, the Academy, and my time in the Bay Area. Leo Blum was one of the last ones, sitting at a table with an Academy guy and two unknowns.
The final one I uncovered, at the table closest to the galley, made Connor draw a sharp breath. “Is that supposed to be me?” he demanded indignantly, glaring at it.
“Sure looks like it.” With its short brown hair, beard, prominent brow, and hazel eyes, I thought the thing resembled him pretty well.
“That doesn’t look anything like me!”
“I don’t think we’re judging an art contest here, dude.”
“You should talk—you’re not even there.”
I’d noticed that—in fact, as I’d been moving among the tables uncovering heads, I’d kept expecting to see my own blue eyes and tanned face looking up at me. “Maybe I’m missing because I’m the one who’s supposed to solve the puzzle. Remember, you weren’t supposed to be here.”
Connor didn’t answer.
I stepped back to examine the scene. Now that the thirty-two dummies all had heads and every chair at the eight tables was occupied, it looked like a dinner seating in a fancy restaurant—except that the white jumpsuits made them look more like prisoners, or maybe funny-farm inmates—than rich diners. Of the ones that were facing me, all of them watched me expectantly as if waiting for something. At least the ones pointed away from me didn’t turn their heads all the way around like owls.
“So what do we do now?” Connor asked. “All the heads are screwed on, but nothing’s happening.”
He had a point. I’d thought once we got them all on, the scene would change somehow, but the dummies all stayed right where we’d put them. “Maybe we have to serve them all dinner?”
Connor tried the door to the galley. “Still locked. Unless you want to try breaking it down.”
“No…not yet.
Maybe we have to figure out how to get it open. You know, like another key.”
A quick look around the car revealed nothing that even vaguely resembled a key, though. Everything about this car looked perfectly normal, from the white-covered tables to the thick, muffling carpet to the simple geometric designs on the ceiling. If there was any code around, I was missing it. And I was pretty sure they wouldn’t repeat the “drink something to see the special stuff” trick again.
“What I want to know is why all these other guys are here,” I mused, pointing around. “I mean, I recognize my friends, and it makes sense for them to be here. But why are there a bunch of guys I’ve never seen in my life?”
“Maybe they needed to fill out the rest of the seats,” Connor said. He was trying to peer out one of the windows, but it was clear he wasn’t seeing anything but darkness.
“That doesn’t make sense. They’ve obviously designed this space—why not just have fewer tables?” I studied one of the strangers’ faces, an old man with wispy white hair and round glasses, and he studied me right back. There had to be a reason for them to be here, but I couldn’t…
“Hold on!” I snapped.
“What?” He spun around fast, looking around for a threat.
“Maybe we did it wrong! Maybe these other heads are distractions!”
“I don’t get it.”
“Come on—I’ve got a hunch. Let’s unscrew all the ones who aren’t part of our group and put them back under those covers.” I moved to the closest one and began removing it from its body.
“What? You’re crazy, man! We just got them on!”
“Just do it—like I said, it’s a hunch. We can always put them back on if I’m wrong.” My heart began to beat faster again, as once more I became conscious of what the bartender had said about time being short. What would happen if we didn’t get out of here in time? He’d said there wasn’t any danger, but ending up stuck in this freak-show wasn’t my idea of fun.
Connor let out a loud sigh and walked to the end of the opposite aisle. He unscrewed the first unknown head, settled it back on its bed of lettuce, and covered it with the silver half-dome. “You know,” he said, “My life was a hell of a lot less complicated before Amber introduced me to you.”
