It’s funny how time can dilate and contract depending on our perception of it. For instance: for Kate, eight months of her life were just gone, seemingly in a mere moment. But that day, her shift at the supermarket seemed to go on forever. And it wasn’t just because she was exhausted from staying up all night trying to solve the mystery. No, that day had been weird ever since Kate first stepped foot out of the house. Because she was looking for him, she realized. She was looking for Mystery Man, in every street and every corner on her way to work. He was nowhere to be found. But because she was looking for him, she was on edge. And because she was on edge, she saw them.
To be fair, they weren’t doing such a great job of being inconspicuous. This was Great Neck Gardens after all; a census-designated place with a population a bit south of 1,300. In any given day, practically all the people Kate would meet on the street she had already met before, especially since she was now working at the supermarket where most Great Neck Gardens residents would eventually stop by at some point. So seeing three complete, unrelated strangers on her way to work would in itself be a rarity; seeing three complete, unrelated strangers dressed in black trench-coats and black fedoras like extras in a spy parody movie, was a whole different story. The men (at least Kate thought they were men, although she wasn’t so sure about that last one) were clearly watching her and, unlike yesterday’s encounter, their sight gave Kate a sense of unease — as if something unsavory was crawling on her skin. She started walking faster, eager to get to the supermarket. She would be safe there, surely.
Four hours and twenty three customers later, she wasn’t so sure about anything anymore. For one, with only five-six people an hour coming to the supermarket to shop, Kate’s brain had all the time in the world to weave every possible conspiracy theory and insane scenario there was, to account for what was happening to her. Currently she was somewhere between “government conspiracy,” “illegal corporate drug testing,” and “elaborate prank by her former Wall Street colleagues to mess with her morale and keep her from coming back.” Okay, perhaps that last one was the most far-fetched…
On the other hand no seriously shady agency, government related or otherwise, would ever send such obvious spies to keep tabs on someone. One of them had even ventured inside the supermarket for heaven’s sake, and spent a good eighteen minutes casually observing the avocados at the grocery section while taking furtive looks around. He (or she) left without buying avocados or anything else, obviously.
That plethora of trench-coat wearing weirdos also made Kate oddly miss her “original” Mystery Man. Where was he? Had he been replaced by these men — were they all working together? Or was he on the run from them? That would be more fitting to the completely different gut reaction Kate had toward them, versus how safe she felt around him. Come to think of it, perhaps they weren’t even following Kate, merely looking for him… Or was it possible that he was simply in Yardley, Pennsylvania, waiting for her to make up her mind and come find him?
Kate kept torturing herself with these questions for the remainder of her shift. But as the time to get off work started looming near, she realized she was just too skittish and on the verge of a nervous breakdown to handle any more close encounters of the trench-coat kind. So she called her mom, to see if she was on her way back from New Jersey. Perhaps she wanted to stop by the supermarket and walk home together? “Catch up on her girls’ night out?” Kate had very little interest in hearing all about Margot’s and Jennifer’s cocktail binging session and the complaining about men (her dad and whomever Jennifer was dating that week) that had most certainly ensued, but at the same time she also had inherent trust in her mom’s abilities to scare people off. Be they suspicious spies or just plain annoying.
Kate really struggled to maintain her composure throughout dinner. Sure, she was feeling relatively safe at her parents’ home (to be fair, using her mom as a shield against the forces of strangeness seemed to have worked on the way back), but the combination of stress and lack of sleep had left her somewhat pale, her hands shaking a bit. Just a tiny bit. Her father, bless him for being the perceptive man he was, asked her about four times if she was feeling alright. After the fourth “I’m fine, daddy, just tired”, Kate decided to excuse herself and call it an early night. It wasn’t a figure of speech either. The moment she found herself alone in her room, all she could do was crawl right onto the bed and turn off the lights. Within mere minutes, she had fallen asleep.
In her dream, Kate was in a white room. Bright white, like these weird flashes she kept having. It was oddly shaped too: way too many angles, corners and weird instruments, like some kind of bizarro laboratory. Dream Kate was very scared…and then she wasn’t. A pair of blue eyes, filled with gentleness and sadness, were looking at her quizzically, as if wondering what her next move would be.
Kate woke up with a jolt. That dream had felt very real. So real that she had to take a few quick glances to make sure that the room she was in, was a plain old rectangle equipped with boring, non-laboratory looking furniture. No blue eyes watching her either. (Can someone be relieved and disappointed at the same time? Kate apparently could.) She took a big, deep breath and let out a sigh, trying to calm herself. It was still night out, she noted after a second. The clock on her bedside table claimed it was 04:01 in the morning, which meant she had fallen asleep for a good six hours if not more. She realized she was feeling strangely rested… and ravenous. After a quick trip to the kitchen to grab a jar of peanut butter (which could have been even faster, if it wasn’t for the sight of roast chicken leftovers from her parents’ dinner giving her a moment’s pause), Kate was back into her room — and back into thinking mode.
The fact of the matter was, ever since she mysteriously reappeared into the world of the living almost six weeks ago, nothing had been normal. Not really. The police still had no leads as per what the heck had happened to her; her memory of those eight months or how she was taken was still a blank; her terminated pregnancy, despite what the clinic, that test and the obvious lack of a baby bump claimed, didn’t actually feel terminated at all. And the worse thing was, she had this sense of being constantly watched, no matter what she did or where she went.
If anything, all the chaos these past two days was a relief: finally, the outside world was making an effort to match the craziness in Kate’s brain. So what was the point in trying to pretend she could ignore all this and go on about her life? Why shouldn’t she explore the only lead she had for answers? Speaking of leads, where was that note? Kate was sure she had left it on her desk, but now it was nowhere to be found. Ugh, never mind. She still had the Yardley address. If that was indeed Mystery Man’s house, she could take her dad’s car now and be there at first light. It was Saturday anyway, Kate reasoned. Her dad wouldn’t need his car to go to work. But what if… what if it took longer than expected for her to get back? If she ever did?
Her rational brain started taking over a bit. Above anything and everything else, she couldn’t keep doing this to her parents. They’d been hurt enough by all this and were only just beginning to get back on their feet. They wanted her to be happy and safe and if she couldn’t be those things to no fault of their own, at least she needed to somehow let them know.
She took out a paper from her notebook and started writing… and then scratching out what she’d just written. What’s the most sane way of telling your parents you believe you’re being followed and that it’s somehow related to your kidnapping? They would tell her to go to the police, obviously. But somehow Kate had very little faith in that detective Bertson and his mustache — what could he do anyway? Post a surveillance detail in Great Neck Gardens? For how long? No, Kate needed real answers; she just couldn’t wait any longer. Determined, she took another piece of paper and tried again.
“Guys, it’s okay, don’t be scared. I just had a flashback from the time when I was missing, and I had to take the car to go and check it out. I do truly believe I’m not in any real danger. But I also know
we’ve all been through a lot and I don’t want you to worry… So, if I’m not back in 24 hours, please feel free to give a call to our friend detective Bertson. The place I’m going to check out is not that far away (sorry for borrowing the car, Dad!) and you can find the address for it on my browser. If not sure, ask Jennifer to tell you how. I love you guys, and I will see you tomorrow for dinner. Love, Kate.”
That wasn’t that bad, she thought. With any luck, reason would prevail and they would wait a bit before calling the police on her. Placing the note on top of her laptop, Kate got dressed and slipped out of the room. Her dad’s car keys were at the table by the door, same place as always. (Gotta love a tidy and reliable man!) Soon she was behind the wheel, her GPS set for Yardley, Pennsylvania, where hopefully a pair of blue eyes awaited her… and some real answers, preferably.
It was 06:20 in the morning when she arrived at her destination. A borough in Bucks County flanked by the Delaware River, Yardley was about twice as large as Great Neck Gardens and probably twice as beautiful. Even in her agitated state, Kate could appreciate the architecture of its historic district, the serenity of Washington Crossing State Park and the golf course… Her car was practically the only one on the road and, barring a few joggers, not many people were around that early on a Saturday morning.
Still, she could tell this was a nice, friendly neighborhood. The kind of nice, friendly neighborhood where people not only would know if a woman was abducted and being held against her will for eight whole months, but where they would also care enough to call the police at the first sign of trouble. And yet, there was no mistaking her GPS. The geolocation stated on Mystery Man’s note pointed to that second house on the right. Like all the other houses on the street, this one was also nice and friendly looking.
Kate ran her fingers through her hair a couple of times, to calm her beating heart. She really had no recollection of being here before, no kind of déjà vu whatsoever. And yet she could feel the importance of this moment, of her decision to come here, a bit like the way animals sometimes feel the storm before it arrives. Was it a good storm or a bad storm though? Should she be running for cover instead?
Fed up with her own internal monologue, Kate parked the car across the street and headed toward the house. If this was the residence of Mystery Man, at least he had great landscaping taste: the garden surrounding the house was lush and beautiful. Although, the more she was approaching the front door, the more the plants surrounding the path seemed to be taking a turn for the bizarre. Kate was by no means an expert in botanology, but she had a great memory (well, usually) and she was certain she had seen plants like that before in documentaries. Documentaries about the large kelp forests of the ocean; because these luminescent algae definitely looked like they shouldn’t be above sea level at all.
Willing to disregard the flora discrepancies for the sake of getting some answers to the big questions, Kate arrived at the front door. She looked around for a doorbell but couldn’t find one, so she decided to have a go at the door knocker. It was oddly shaped, almost conical; a bit like the note Mystery Man gave her (at least before said note started withering and apparently shrinking out of existence).
Taking another deep breath, Kate lifted the door knocker and banged it once, politely. It was very early in the morning, after all, perhaps Mystery Man or whoever lived in this house was still asleep… Thoughts on Mystery Man’s domestic situation entertained her briefly: somehow Kate couldn’t imagine that man with the fiery hair and the sharp eyes mowing the lawn, waving hello to the neighbors and playing golf on the weekends. After a few awkward moments though, when it became quite clear that no one was coming to answer the door, Kate decided to come out of her reverie and knock again — louder this time. He’d gotten her to drive all the way here after all and didn’t bother to specify a time, so it wasn’t really her fault if she woke him up, was it? But still, no answer.
Her frustration levels rising, Kate abandoned all attempts at good manners and banged her fist at the door, hard. That seemed to do the trick alright. With an ominous, creaking sound, the door opened.
Kate really disliked horror movies. Apart from everything else (like the fact that life can be chilling enough as it is, you don’t need movies to make your blood run cold), she thought they were also quite predictable. Like, everybody knows that the blonde woman entering the haunted house on her own almost never makes it out alive. The smart thing is always to call for back-up, but characters in horror movies never seem to do so. With a sigh, Kate realized there was nobody she could call anyway, nobody she could risk getting hurt if danger was indeed lurking on the other side of that door. Fully aware that she was behaving just like those blonde women in horror movies, Kate pushed the door a bit further… and stepped inside. To her amazement though, the inside of the house did not look like it belonged to a horror movie at all. More like a sci-fi one.
There was a lot of strange equipment around, equipment that made her think about that white room in her dream. Equipment that had no place being in anybody’s hallway, if that was what it was. Because if she was being honest, she wasn’t so sure the same rules that governed the outside of the house applied to its interior architecture as well. The corners and angles were all wrong, the ceiling looked higher, there were levers and buttons on the walls for purposes she couldn’t quite identify and yet…
And yet, she had an eerie feeling that a part of her, perhaps the same part that understood Mystery Man’s language, could find its way around this place with the ease of someone who’s lived here for a while. Kate was so transfixed by what she was seeing and how all these things she was seeing made her feel, she hardly noticed that the door had closed behind her.
She reached to touch a lever that seemed to be made out of dark green metal, at the same time vaguely wondering why her fingers went for that particular one. Just as she was about to touch it though, a voice stopped her dead in her tracks. It was a deep, raspy voice she had heard before, not so long ago.
“Ith-rassil”, the voice said simply, in a tone that managed to convey both a question and a lingering sense of awe. Kate didn’t even have to turn to her left, toward the room that voice came from. She knew it belonged to the Mystery Man.
As Kate found out a few minutes later, when she had finally calmed down a bit and could hold a somewhat civilized conversation, the Mystery Man’s name was Sidanav. But when she first crossed that weird hallway following the sound of his voice, she didn’t really care about pleasantries at all — all she wanted to do was confront him.
She was going to demand answers about all the strange things that kept happening to her and were probably all his fault. To tell him that the police knew where she was and they would be coming to arrest him soon. She was going to yell, even, so that the neighbors would be alerted to the fact that there was something weird going on in this house. If those plants by the door hadn’t tipped them off already. Who ever heard of bioluminescent algae in a suburb in Pennsylvania? Caught in her own momentum, Kate stormed into the room.
When she took a good look at him though, all her hostile intentions went out of the window. It couldn’t be that she worried about a man she’d just met, could it? No, she was simply caught off guard by the state of him. Yes, that must be it, she reasoned with herself. And understandably so. The man’s clothes, a t-shirt and a pair of slacks (a far cry from his elegant beige trench-coat), were shabby and stained; his fiery red hair was a tattered mess; his face, clean-shaven just the other day, was now sporting a full-on beard. What really gave Kate a pause though, were his eyes. His eyes, still blue and striking of course, were completely bloodshot, with huge dark circles underneath. Those were the eyes of someone who hadn’t slept in quite some time.
“Are… are you alright, sir?” she said, her good manners suddenly kicking in. Perhaps she had woken him up after all? If so, he definitely wasn’t a morning person.
For some inexplicable reason, the man seemed hurt by her concern… or was it her for
mal manner? He definitely seemed a bit defeated when he replied, in perfect English, that his name was Sidanav. But she could call him Sid, he added, “for short”.
He urged her to take a seat at what looked like a Rococo era green velvet couch while he sat, or perched rather, in a hammock made from some kind of satin-looking fabric, that was hanging from the ceiling right across the couch. The room was too dimly lit for Kate to take a proper look around, but from what she could tell so far his taste in furniture could only be described as “eclectic” (“madman” would be a more accurate word for it, perhaps). She followed his lead though and sat on the couch. If this was the house of a nut-job, no point in insulting him. No point in standing around while waiting to get some answers, either.
As if he could read her mind just then, Mystery Man, no, Sid, told her he was sorry about that whole disappearing on her the other day.
“It’s just not safe to talk out in the open, you know?”
No, Kate pointed out as politely as she could, her levels of frustration rising again. She didn’t know. Could he kindly start explaining?
The Ithaden’s Slave Page 3
